


Hell Is Empty

by AconitumNapellus



Series: Filthy [3]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Depression, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Rape, Rape Recovery, Recovery, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 10:16:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17578976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AconitumNapellus/pseuds/AconitumNapellus
Summary: The story Filthy, from Napoleon's point of view. Illya has been held prisoner as a sex slave for months. When Napoleon rescues him, he falls apart.TW both for rape and suicide attempt/suicidal thoughts. Sorry for the darkness.





	Hell Is Empty

How many leads has he followed up that have fallen through? How many low and foetid places has he searched by now? It’s been weeks and weeks, and surely Illya is dead. It seems impossible that he’s not dead. Thrush will have wrung everything out of him and killed him, or killed him because they know they’ll get nothing from him, and it’s cheaper to dispose of a body than keep a captive. So Illya must be dead. But there are rumours, whispers, little underground words that make Napoleon simultaneously hopeful and afraid. Hopeful that his partner is alive. Afraid of what he will find.

The music in the club is so loud it feels solid against his ears. The lighting is dark and bodies are moving and the air is thick with the smells of alcohol and sweat and smoke. It’s good. Music this loud and lighting this dim and the scent of drugs in the air make for distraction and obfuscation. It will be easier to get in and out. It’s easy to get in anyway, if you have the money and the right words and the right attitude. So he gets in, and he leans on the bar and speaks softly to a man whose face is shaded and hard to see.

‘Hear you’ve got something of a treasure downstairs, right? Five bucks for a ride?’

‘This ain’t no fairground. Five bucks for a fuck,’ the man says baldly. ‘He’s a good, sweet fuck. Five is cheap.’

Inside Napoleon shudders. To the man’s face he smiles.

‘I need a fuck,’ he says. ‘God do I need it. Been one hell of a dry spell.’

It hasn’t, of course. Napoleon rarely has dry spells. But desire is the furthest thing from his mind right now. The words he’s speaking make him feel sick, but he doesn’t let that reach his face.

‘You get half an hour,’ the man tells him.

‘How about eight bucks for an hour?’ Napoleon asks, and the man laughs.

‘Ten for an hour. Fifteen for hour and a half. Twenty for two hours. You get the picture.’

Napoleon pulls out his wallet; not his wallet, of course, but one he uses when he wants to look like a different kind of person. He pulls out five crumpled one dollar bills.

‘All right,’ he says. ‘Half an hour. Where do I go?’

‘We keep him in the basement,’ the man says.

He walks around the bar and as his face is caught by the light Napoleon sees that this is Lee, the man he was looking for, the man who was rumoured to have done this terrible thing.

He doesn’t know what to think or feel as he follows the man through a door and down old brick steps. There is a scent of damp and mould that starts to push away the rich and varied scents of the club. It’s a miserable place. Napoleon takes note of the route, of each door they pass, of what lies ahead. They’re beneath ground level so the only exit will likely be back through the club. But it’s dark up there, and he’ll have to make do with what he has. There is adrenaline running beneath his skin but he acts casual, looking about no more than any other man might.

‘God, it’s filthy down here,’ Napoleon comments, because this passage is starting to smell of stale urine and rotting food as well as damp and mould, and he wants to speak so that if Illya is here and awake and alert he will recognise his voice and be ready for what’s coming. ‘I can smell it already.’

‘What do you expect for five dollars?’ Lee shrugs. ‘The Hilton?’

They have reached a door on the right, a flimsy wooden thing. It’s not even locked. Lee turns the handle and gives the door a little kick because it sticks in the swollen frame. He reaches into the room to touch a light switch.

The light is dazzling after the dimness outside. It’s a bare bulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling on a twisted flex. The bulb must be a hundred watts. Napoleon takes in the painted brick walls and the bucket in the corner peripherally, but his attention is focussed on the bed. He has to work so hard to control his expression.

It is Illya. At first euphoria leaps inside, carefully held inside, because it is Illya, and he is alive. But his condition is terrible. He’s chained by wrists and ankles, splayed in an X, and he looks more like an animal than anything else, like a poor naked animal laid out and waiting for some terrible act to be performed on it. His eyes are hardly open and the weak little sobs he is trying to stifle are so pitiful that Napoleon wants to shoot his keeper through the forehead right there and then. But he can’t. He has to wait for the proper moment. He has to wait for it to be safe so they both get out of here alive.

He closes the door behind him, and thinks how best to draw his gun before the man can react with his own. Toying with a man with a gun is like toying with a venomous snake.

His eyes are drawn again and again to Illya. Perhaps Lee thinks he’s eyeing him up appraisingly, with lust perhaps, but he’s just noticing the sharpness of his ribs under sallow skin and the sharp rise of his hip bones. He sees the filth all over him and the billowing bruises and the cigarette burns and the way his hair is lank and matted and almost brown with grease and dirt. There’s nothing attractive about him; nothing, to Napoleon’s mind, that would conjure desire. He feels a terrible sorrow for all he has been put through, how he has been splayed like this and laid out as nothing more than meat to be fucked. He is so thin. His cheeks are hollow. Napoleon can see that even though Illya’s head is turned towards the wall. His wrists and ankles show nasty patches of red where the chains have rubbed on them. His nakedness is pitiful. The whole scene is pitiful, but nothing is more pitiful than those little sobs coming from Illya’s mouth. He doesn’t know how anyone could come in here and see this sight and be aroused.

‘All right, fella,’ Lee says. ‘You got thirty minutes with him. His wrists are locked but the ankles are just hooked. Plenty of hooks up there so you can get him in the right position. Just watch out when you rearrange his legs because he’s got a good kick on him when he’s in the mood.’

Napoleon eyes Illya’s legs and sees how wasted his muscles are. It’s hard to imagine him kicking, but he imagines, can’t help imagining, someone coming in and unhooking his ankles and fixing them up to the beams in the ceiling. In the early days he must have kicked, must have fought. He can’t imagine him doing anything else. Now he looks utterly passive. He must let every person who comes here do exactly what they like. He feels such a powerful wave of nausea that he has to hide it with a cough.

‘So. I’ll give you some – uh – privacy,’ Lee says. ‘Enjoy.’

_Enjoy._ A rage swells in Napoleon but he keeps it firmly inside. He has his hand on his gun now, tucked where it is in the waistband of his trousers, hidden under his sweater.

‘Er, just a moment, before you go,’ he says, because he wants Lee to see this. He wants him to know, even if only for a moment, that he’s about to die. He wants him to feel that fear. He draws his gun in one smooth movement and aims it unerringly at Lee’s heart. He doesn’t feel a single moment of remorse as he squeezes the trigger.

Lee crumples instantly, a puppet who has had his strings cut. Illya reacts, the first real reaction he has made to people in the room beyond those little sobs. His filthy tie is looped around his neck and tied to the bed head, and he chokes a little as he moves. Then the sobs increase, growing louder, as if he wants to talk but he can’t do anything but cry. Napoleon is at his side in an instant, cutting that tie from his neck, then pressing putty into the chains that hold him. He rests his hand gently over Illya’s eyes and closes his own and detonates the putty. He hears the chains go slack.

‘All right, buddy,’ he says softly. ‘Yeah. Come on. Sit up. That’s it.’

He hopes his reassuring tone will help Illya stop crying. He’s so afraid someone will hear the noise. But perhaps they’re used to that noise. Perhaps Illya always cries. His partner is starting to sit up, shaking and crying and lifting his hand in an aimless gesture. Napoleon takes hold of his hand to help him sit but Illya shrinks away at the firm touch.

‘All right,’ Napoleon says. ‘Yeah, quietly now…’

He needs to get Illya out of here. He needs to somehow get him to calm down because he’s going to need to walk out of here through that club, and he can’t take him out sobbing and shaking. They’ll be spotted instantly.

‘Come on,’ he says.

He puts a hand under Illya’s arm, trying to steady him because he doesn’t look as if he’ll be able to hold himself up. His skin is cold, like cold stone. His arm feels so thin, and he is so pale, raw like a creature torn from its shell. He looks as if he doesn’t know what to do with his limbs, now he’s been freed.

‘There, just sit there for a moment,’ Napoleon says gently. ‘That’s it.’

He turns to Lee’s body and starts to strip him of his clothing. It’s a pleasure to tear the clothes from his limp, dead body. If he weren’t so controlled he would kick and beat that body until it was a mess. He takes the clothes back to Illya, who is sitting in a daze, staring down at himself as if he doesn’t recognise his own body. He pushes the clothes at Illya and he doesn’t seem to know what to do.

‘ _Put them on_ ,’ Napoleon tells him.

He starts sorting out the clothes himself because it’s obvious that Illya isn’t up to it. He’s just touching the clothes in wonder. He gets the t-shirt over his head, threads his arms through the sleeves. He bypasses underwear and eases the trousers up his legs. It’s a relief to get that thin, damaged body covered up.

‘Come on. Socks. That’s it. The shoes won’t fit. They’re dark socks. Maybe no one will notice. Come on, jacket. That’s it.’

It’s like dressing a rag doll. Illya tries to help him but it’s as if he’s half in another place. Napoleon touches a hand to his hair, thinking of trying to straighten it out a bit, but his fingers get caught in the greasy tangles.

‘Can’t do anything about your hair,’ he murmurs. ‘It’s dark up there. Never mind.’

He rests a hand against Illya’s face, against a beard that has obviously been growing since his capture. There’s a nasty burn right by his eye, a deep cigarette burn, but when he tilts Illya’s head up a little Illya’s eyes slide away as if he’s ashamed. It’s as if he’s locked behind a wall somewhere and Napoleon can’t reach him.

‘Looks sore,’ Napoleon says about the burn, and Illya replies, ‘Yes.’

It’s the first word he’s spoken and it’s wonderful to hear. It’s like being given a key. Napoleon wants to stop and hug him, but they don’t have time for that. They have to get out of here before someone notices that Lee hasn’t come back upstairs.

‘Try to keep your face down and they might not see the bruises,’ Napoleon says. ‘Come on, Illya. You can walk?’

‘I – I – ’

Illya seems so dazed as Napoleon makes him stand. He is wavering on his feet.

‘Napoleon?’ he asks, as if he’s only just realised who this is.

‘Yeah, I’m getting you out of here. Come on. Come on.’

Illya looks as if he can hardly stand. Without Napoleon’s support he leans on the wall. Napoleon picks up Lee’s corpse and puts him on the bed. Even just that moment of confusion when someone sees him will give them an extra few seconds of time. Then he goes back to Illya and puts his arm snugly around his shoulders and says, ‘Walk. Come on. You’re drunk. We’re both drunk.’

Inside he is praying to any god that Illya will be able to do this with him; that he’ll be able to walk out through that club. He wishes he could give Illya Lee’s gun but he doesn’t think he would be able to handle it and being seen as armed might be enough to get him shot. He certainly wouldn’t be able to manage in a fist fight, so it’s up to Napoleon to get them out of here.

He holds onto him as they move into that damp passage, and he looks at Illya’s socked feet and feels such a terrible lurch of grief for what he’s suffered. Illya sways again and for a moment it seems he’s going to faint. His face goes a ghastly colour and suddenly it’s only Napoleon’s strength holding him up, and he asks, ‘Hey? All right, Illya? Are you all right? I need you to walk out of here on your feet. There are men everywhere. It’s like Thrush central up there.’

Illya is tottering. He leans on the wall and Napoleon holds him and waits. He nods his head very slowly, as if nodding makes him dizzy. But they have to move. They have to get out of here. Napoleon waits just long enough for a little colour to come back to Illya’s cheeks, and then he nudges him on, along the passage, up the steps, and up into the thumping, churning hell of the dance floor. Napoleon walks with him, makes him keep moving, guides him through that room and to the door. The bouncers hardly give them a glance, but as they step down into the night air Illya suddenly makes a weird, hysterical noise, and Napoleon hurries him on down the street, shushing him quietly.

‘Come on, Illya, let’s get out of here,’ he says. ‘Car’s just down the street.’

He looks like a burrow creature dragged out into the open air, like an animal that doesn’t know which way to go or where to turn. Napoleon is so grateful that he managed to park close to the club. He gets Illya into the car and starts the engine, and as soon as they’re moving down the street and out of danger something seems to break in his partner. He starts to sob, is wracked with sobs. His hands move restlessly and he pulls his knees up and drops them and presses his palm on the window and then drops it again. For a moment Napoleon doesn’t know what to do, but he increases his speed a little because whatever he chooses to do, it is urgent.

‘I’m going to take you straight to the hospital,’ he says. That seems like the only thing he can give to Illya. He needs medical treatment.

‘No,’ Illya says through the sobs, and his voice is hoarse and shaking. ‘No, take me home. Just take me home. Please...’

Napoleon hesitates for a moment, but Illya’s pleading cuts right to the heart of him.

‘All right,’ he says, and he makes a U-turn in the middle of the deserted street, and starts to head for the bridge.

 

((O))

 

He second-guesses himself all the way back to Illya’s apartment, because his partner seems half out of it, unable to control himself, hardly able to talk. But something in him relaxes a little as they draw up outside his apartment building. The dark street is illuminated softly by streetlamps and there is no one outside when Napoleon hustles Illya out of the car and up the stoop to the door. He has a key to Illya’s place just as Illya does to his, and he lets them in and helps him up those interminable flights of stairs and then in through his front door.

Illya stands there as Napoleon turns on the light and deactivates the alarm. He just stands there, swaying, staring, as if he doesn’t know what to do. This whole apartment is his but he stands in the doorway like a guest.

‘A bath, I think,’ Napoleon says, and Illya starts a little and murmurs, ‘Yes. I’m so dirty. I’m – ’

He’s weeping again. Napoleon just stops and holds him in his arms, wrapping his arms tightly around Illya’s body and feeling the sharpness of his shoulder blades and the knobs of his spine pushing through the stolen clothes. The smell of Illya rises around him. It’s a smell of sweat and a smell of filth that he can’t quite define, that he doesn’t quite want to define because of what those separate smells might mean. The clothes he’s wearing smell of cigarette smoke, and he knows how Illya must hate that. They smell of the dead man’s blood.

‘Come on,’ he says eventually. ‘Let’s get you clean.’

He leads Illya into the bathroom and turns the tap on the shower and the pipes clank and judder and then water spurts from the showerhead. He puts his hand under it to test the temperature, and then turns back to Illya. He’s just standing there, wavering.

‘Take your clothes off,’ he says, and Illya flinches, the colour sinking away from the surface of his skin.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says gently. ‘You can’t get in the shower without taking those clothes off. They’re not your clothes anyway. You don’t want to carry on wearing his clothes.’

At that reminder Illya moves his hands, jerkily, spider-like, to fumble at the clothing. It’s as if he can’t make his fingers obey his mind. Napoleon helps him, carefully stripping off those clothes, and the sight of Illya’s body underneath is a shock all over again. He could count his ribs without touching him, and he’s patched with bruises and sores and burns. The sight of blood on his chest gives him a sudden spike of concern, but then he remembers that is Lee’s blood, not Illya’s. It had been almost unnoticeable on the black top.

‘All right,’ he says, and he helps Illya to clamber into the tub. His skin is cool under his hands, and his bones feel so close to the surface. ‘Sit down if you need to. You don’t need to stand up.’

So Illya sits in the curving bottom of the bath, slumps really, and he is an inert thing as Napoleon gets a washcloth and soap and starts to ease away the dirt from his skin. The water runs filthy to the plughole, brown with dirt and dead skin cells, and Napoleon keeps on washing, taking gentle care around the burns and the bruises. He carefully soaps the beard fuzzing his lower face and tries not to think about what the dried accretions might be that he’s washing out of the hair. He wonders briefly if he should offer to shave Illya too, but decides that’s one extra bother he doesn’t need. For now he just wants to get him clean.

He rubs shampoo into Illya’s hair, and feels despair because it is like felt on his head.

‘I don’t know what I can do about your hair,’ he says. ‘Maybe better cut it off.’

Illya flinches at those words, and Napoleon is full of remorse. Illya has had so much taken from him. There’s no need to take his hair.

‘All right,’ Napoleon says. ‘All right, I’ll do what I can. I’ll try to get the shampoo all through it and get the dirt out, then when it’s dry I’ll see what a comb can do.’

‘Thank you,’ Illya replies.

Napoleon carries on rubbing shampoo into his hair, running water through it until it starts to run clear. Illya is rocking, and he puts a hand on his shoulder, trying to stop him.

‘Illya, you need to sit still,’ he says. ‘I can’t do your hair when you’re moving.’

But Illya doesn’t seem to be here with him any more. There’s no sense of presence in his eyes. He looks haunted and far away, and he rocks and rocks with his arms tightly clasped about his raised knees, as if the rocking is the only thing keeping him in this world.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says again. ‘Illya? Are you okay?’

He gasps suddenly and seems to come back. He stares as if he has dropped in here from another place.

‘S-sorry,’ he says. ‘Sorry.’

There are sores on Illya’s lower back, where the bones of his pelvis mount close to the surface of the skin. They are angry and ugly. Napoleon touches a finger very lightly near to one, and Illya flinches.

‘That must hurt,’ Napoleon says. ‘You’ve got a lot of bed sores. Did they never let you up?’

‘No, they – Well – Once a day,’ Illya says, and his voice is abstracted and distant.

_Once a day,_ Napoleon thinks. To take him to the toilet, no doubt. How terrible it all must have been. Whenever he tries to imagine it his mind scurries away in fear. Whenever he moves the cloth over Illya’s injuries or his jutting bones he rethinks his decision to bring him home.

‘Illya, I’m going to have to take you to the hospital,’ he says. ‘To the Infirmary at least.’

At that, everything about Illya tightens. He is holding his knees encircled with his arms and a terrible noise comes from him, a low, long, wordless hum.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says.

He doesn’t know what to do. This isn’t Illya. It’s like having a changeling in front of him. He walks out of the bathroom for a moment, wiping his wet hands on his trousers, because he just doesn’t know what to do. He stands there in Illya’s sitting room, but he can’t leave him in the bath alone. He has to go back in there. So he finds a tumbler and pours a measure of scotch into it from a bottle on the sideboard, and takes it back in to the bathroom. He can just see the shadow of Illya’s form through the shower curtain, and for a moment he isn’t brave enough to pull back that curtain. But he has to. He slips behind it and kneels by the bath again and presses the glass into Illya’s hand.

‘Come on. Drink up,’ he says.

Illya takes a mouthful as if he’s drinking water, not spirits. He swallows, and suddenly he is sick, vomiting something thin and without substance down into the water swirling about his feet.

‘Jeez,’ Napoleon says. ‘Jeez...’

He doesn’t know what to say or what to do. He wishes he could just scoop Illya up and have him at a hospital in an instant, but he really doesn’t know what that would do to him. He seemed so desperate for the comfort of home, and he doesn’t seem to be in danger. He’s just so hurt, so thin, so traumatised, and Napoleon doesn’t know what to do.

‘Come on, Illya,’ he says, turning himself to the washing again. He wipes away the traces of vomit and he hesitates and then he says, ‘Illya, I need to – There are places that I need to wash – ’

Illya’s eyes flicker up, and he blinks under the falling water.

‘Can you let me clean you there?’ he asks.

He hardly gets a response, but he reaches the washcloth down and Illya shakes but doesn’t try to stop him as he washes around his genitals.

‘Can you let me get underneath?’ Napoleon asks tentatively, and wordlessly Illya shifts a little so he can move the cloth to wash between his buttocks, and although he does it as gently as possible Illya whimpers in pain, and then clamps down on that whimper so it becomes another of those awful repressed hums of distress. He looks as though he’s clamping in nausea, and Napoleon can’t bear the reaction.

‘That’s it,’ Napoleon says, turning the shower off and grabbing a towel.

‘No, I’m dirty,’ Illya protests, lifting a hand as if reaching for the shower controls, but he falls short by a long way. ‘I’m still dirty,’

‘You’re not, Illya,’ Napoleon promises, rubbing the white towel over Illya’s shoulders and back. ‘You’re clean. Head to toe. You’re all clean. I promise you.’

He turns the towel to show Illya how there’s no dirt on it, and he murmurs, ‘All right. All right,’ but Napoleon is sure he still feels dirty. But he ploughs on, getting Illya’s bathrobe over his arms and helping him up out of the bath and cinching the belt around his waist. It looks huge on him. He’s lost so much weight. He looks like a victim of consumption from a Victorian novel, eyes surrounded by dark halos, his cheeks flushed. As Illya walks into the other room his legs are shaking. Napoleon has to help hold him up, and he mutters, ‘Jesus Christ, Illya,’ as he lowers him onto the settee. This is unbearable. He doesn’t know how to bear what has been done to his friend to turn him into this shaking, traumatised creature.

He leaves him on the sofa and goes to the phone, calling a pizza place and going through the order by rote. This is what he gets when they’re back from a mission and too tired for anything, and they go together to one of their apartments and eat and drink and sleep. Illya needs that kind of food. He needs warmth and comfort and stodge and fat. He’d like to be able to get him blind drunk, but that’s not a good idea.

He comes back to Illya and crouches in front of him. He seems to be in a haze again, lost somewhere in thought or memory, his face blanked out. Then suddenly he heaves in breath and his eyes snap into focus.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says, a hand on his knee.

Illya’s eyes flicker to his and then away again, and then he crumples, and he is sobbing again, the sobs wrenching up out of him like solid things, ringing through the little room. Napoleon holds him and feels the thinness and lightness of him. He’s clean now, and smells of skin and soap instead of sweat and filth, but he’s still bruised and burnt and half starved, and he feels like a fragile bird in Napoleon’s arms. His sobs run through his whole frame, shuddering through him.

‘Hey, hey,’ Napoleon says. ‘Hey, it’s all right now. You’re safe now. I got you out. You’re all right now.’

Illya just cries and cries and cries, and sometimes inarticulate words are almost heard, and sometimes the sobs are just animal and meaningless. Napoleon keeps on holding him until the door buzzer sounds, and they both jerk out of this strange place, and he goes to the door to get the food. Eating makes Illya sick at first, and Napoleon cleans up and comforts him, afraid he was sick because he has been so starved. It’s only when he thinks, that he realises that while he was chained there in that basement Illya has been fucked in the mouth, choked over and over. When the pizza pushed into the back of his throat he thought of that, and was sick. It is a terrible thing.

He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to think. All evening Illya slips in and out of these terrible states of shock and memory and sobbing grief, and Napoleon holds him and tries to comfort him and just tries to contain this terrible wreck of what used to be his friend. Finally exhaustion overcomes Illya, and Napoleon leads him into his bedroom and slips the bathrobe off him and tucks him down into bed like a child.

As soon as he is asleep he goes straight to the phone and gets through to the U.N.C.L.E. Infirmary, and a few minutes later he is assured that a doctor is on the way.

He sits there afterwards, curling cold slices of pizza into his mouth, trying to process all he’s seen tonight. He feels stiff with tiredness, and numb too. He can’t keep the image of Illya on that bed out of his mind. He sees Illya before this happened; trim, neat, so self possessed; and then he’s seeing him there on that bed, naked and wasted and taken apart. He sees him as he’s been this evening, sobbing and shaking and turned in on himself. Fury seethes and subsides, seethes and subsides. How could anyone do that to a man?

It’s such a relief when the doctor comes at last, to have someone look at Illya, to tell him that he’s not in danger, to have a professional here who can look through the emotion of the situation. Illya is infested with lice and he is malnourished and traumatised, but he will be all right until the morning. When the doctor arrived he was bleary and confused and the minimal examination was obviously traumatic for him, but still, Napoleon is confident that he did the right thing.

‘Just be very gentle with him,’ the doctor says as he leaves.

Illya was clenched under the covers in his bedroom as Napoleon walked with the doctor out into the living room. He stands there at the half-open front door, wishing in a way that he had been told Illya had to go straight to hospital, but also enormously relieved that he can stay in his own bed.

‘I will,’ Napoleon assures the doctor. ‘I’ll bring him in tomorrow, but that’s the only pressure I’ll be putting on him, because I know he won’t want to come.’

‘All right,’ Dr Davidson says with a smile. He pats Napoleon’s arm. ‘I’m glad you found him, Solo. We’re all glad. Don’t worry. We’ll make him right again.’

_Don’t worry_ , Napoleon thinks as he locks the door and goes back to Illya’s room. What an impossible instruction. There is everything to worry about. He’s never seen Illya in such a state.

‘Well, it sounds like you’re lucky,’ Napoleon says softly, sitting down on the edge of Illya’s mattress. ‘You don’t need to leave your bed tonight, at least.

Illya is half-curled on his side, hands up near his face. Something passes, a little flinch, at Napoleon’s words.

‘I was supposed to be grateful,’ he says in a strange, distant voice. ‘I was supposed to have been killed. I was supposed to be in that furnace down the hall. So I was lucky. I should be grateful...’

His voice trails off. Napoleon doesn’t know what to say. He just doesn’t know what to say.

‘God,’ he murmurs, and Illya makes a little sound, something that might almost be a laugh. But then that almost-laugh becomes a sob, and his body is shaking, and Napoleon presses his arms around him again and holds him and Illya’s face is hot and wet against his shirt.

Napoleon holds him all the more tightly, and Illya cries and cries, until eventually the crying quietens and his body becomes limp and his breath comes in soft little gasps with the remains of the sobs. Napoleon gently rests him back into the bed and tucks the covers over him. He stands there like a parent, he doesn’t know how long for, just watching. Then he goes out into the living room and brings a fireside chair through, and he sits there by Illya’s bed, just watching over him. He could sleep on the sofa, but he wants to be there. He needs to be there.

For a while Illya is quiet, his breath soft, his body relaxed. Then he has been asleep long enough to slip into dreams. He twitches, mumbles, fumbles with his hands as if pushing something away. Then he’s saying, ‘No, please. It hurts. It hurts...’ and struggling, fighting, crying out. Napoleon shakes him gently, and then harder, and Illya comes awake with a wild look in his eyes.

‘God, God,’ Illya pants, and Napoleon strokes his arm.

‘You’re here, you’re here,’ he tells him. ‘You’re all right.’

Illya stares at him for a moment, looking utterly bewildered. Then a kind of knowing comes into his eyes, as if everything is coalescing, and suddenly he looks away.

‘It’s all right, Illya,’ Napoleon tells him. ‘I’ll be here, all night. Go back to sleep.’

And he is there, all night, slipping in and out of sleep, watching Illya when he wakes and dreaming of him the rest of the time. It is a long, long night.

 

((O))

 

In the car Illya is quiet, shrinking into the seat as if he wants to disappear through the fabric into another place. He looks like a cat being taken to the vets, staring warily at everything, flinching at unexpected noises and curled in on himself.

‘I’ll stop off and get you some doughnuts or something,’ Napoleon says, and Illya murmurs, ‘I don’t want anything. I’d rather just go home, Napoleon. Can’t I go home?’

‘Now, we made a deal,’ Napoleon says in a reasonable tone. ‘I promised I’d bring you in this morning. You really need to see the doctor.’

‘I know,’ Illya murmurs. He closes his eyes tightly, rubbing his hands spasmodically on the fabric of his trousers where it lies over his thighs. ‘I know I have to. I know I need to.’

‘All right,’ Napoleon says. ‘But I want to get you something to eat first.’

Napoleon swings the car into a convenient parking space and gets out and comes round to Illya’s door.

‘Come on. I want you to choose something to eat.’

Illya looks so afraid at the idea of getting out of the car, but Napoleon is half afraid that if he leaves him alone he’ll get out and run home, or hotwire the car and drive it away.

‘Come on,’ he says, holding out a hand. ‘Come on. Come choose something to eat.’

He takes him into a Jewish bakery and café and Illya just stands there staring at the array of food as if he hasn’t seen anything like it before. Napoleon lets him stand there for a little while before he takes charge and orders him a bagel with cream cheese and onion, and a coffee, to go. He’s sure Illya will be hungry once he gets his hands on the food. He’s been half starved for weeks. He takes him back to the car and gets in and passes over the paper bag with the bagel in it, and Illya just holds it loosely on his open hands.

‘I feel sick,’ he murmurs, and he does look sick. His face is pale; worse than pale. It’s an odd colour, a colour that speaks of nausea.

‘You need to eat,’ Napoleon says, leaning over and tearing the paper a little so that the shiny brown curve of the bagel is revealed. ‘Come on. You need to eat.’

There’s something going on in Illya’s mind. He wishes he could know what he’s thinking. He has that distant, haunted look. When he looks like that he remembers the sight of him naked on that bed and the knowledge of what must have happened to him there, and he feels sick too.

‘Come on,’ Napoleon says again, making sure his voice is soft and gentle. ‘Illya. Eat something. You need to keep your strength up, yes?’

Illya flinches, and Napoleon tries to think what nerve he might have hit, but he doesn’t know. He can’t know all the horror that’s passing in Illya’s mind.

He tears the bag right open and takes out the bagel and lifts it towards Illya’s mouth.

‘A bite?’ he asks. ‘Come on.’

Illya finally takes the bagel from him and bites into it. He looks as if he is chewing and swallowing sawdust. He offers Illya the coffee and Illya puts the bagel down on the paper bag on his lap and gulps a mouthful of coffee.

‘Better?’ Napoleon asks. ‘Can you have a bit more?’

It’s like coaxing a child to eat. It takes almost twenty minutes of sitting there and shepherding every bite to get Illya to eat the whole thing.

‘All right,’ Napoleon says eventually. ‘We’d better get going. I promised I’d get you in this morning.’

Illya just goes quiet. He holds his coffee cup half full in his hands and sits there with his eyes closed as Napoleon starts the engine and pulls away from the kerb. The coffee slops a little and he hardly reacts. It isn’t long before Napoleon is pulling up outside U.N.C.L.E..

‘All right,’ he says. He taps Illya’s knee. ‘Illya, we’re here. You need to come in with me.’

He gets out of the car, and is surprised when Illya opens his own door and gets out and comes round to the kerb. He looks pale and his hands are clenched at his sides, but he’s walking without being prompted. He looks small. His clothes are baggy on him because of the weight he’s lost. Napoleon puts a hand on his arm, and he shakes himself a little and says almost angrily, ‘I can walk.’

‘Okay,’ Napoleon says, and he walks at Illya’s side, just a little behind him as they go down the steps and into the tailor’s shop. Del Floria reacts and starts to speak, but Napoleon catches his eyes and gives just the smallest shake of his head. Del Floria stops himself before he says whatever he meant to say, and instead says in a quieter tone, ‘Welcome home, Mr Kuryakin. Go on through.’

Illya doesn’t even look at him. He walks straight into the changing cubicle and Napoleon joins him and twists the coat hook, and they go through into the reception.

‘Mr Kuryakin!’ the receptionist exclaims.

Illya seems locked inside himself. He can’t look at the girl behind the desk. When she reaches out with his badge he doesn’t take it as he usually does. She pins it to his jacket herself, glancing at Napoleon as she does. It’s obvious something is wrong with Illya. He’s been missing for so long, and come back bearded and thin and bruised, with matted hair. The cigarette burn is so visible near his eye.

Napoleon takes his own badge and hurries Illya on into the corridor beyond, a hand on his arm.

‘Are you all right?’ he asks quietly, but Illya doesn’t reply. His head is tilted down and his hands are still clenched into fists, and he is in another place entirely. Napoleon doesn’t try to get words out of him. He just walks with him, silent but close, until they’re entering the infirmary and being ushered into an examination room.

Illya sits in a chair, and he fiddles with his fingers and tugs his jacket more closely around himself. Napoleon stands just behind him as the doctor comes to sit in a chair facing Illya. It’s not the same man as last night. He has a little sheaf of notes on his knee, and he refers to them before looking up and saying in a very gentle voice, ‘Mr Kuryakin, I’m sure you must be feeling very nervous about this, but – ’

Suddenly Illya is vomiting, and the doctor shoves his chair backwards just in time and grabs a paper bowl and thrusts it under Illya’s mouth. Napoleon lays a hand softly on his back then pulls out a couple of paper towels from the dispenser and when Illya doesn’t take them Napoleon dabs at his mouth himself.

‘It’s all right,’ the doctor assures him, giving him water in a paper cup. ‘It’s all right. Mr Kuryakin, you’re obviously very anxious about this. I’d like to give you a mild sedative.’

‘No,’ Illya says hoarsely. ‘No, I want to be aware.’

‘It won’t stop you being aware,’ the doctor assures him. ‘It will just relax you a little. It will be easier if you’re relaxed.’

‘ _No_ ,’ Illya says. ‘No. I need to be – ’

It’s terrible to watch. Napoleon can see how close he is to breaking down. But he knows what it’s like, in some small way, to be held against your will and tormented and be able to do nothing to protect yourself. He knows what it’s like to be drugged. He’s afraid the doctor will insist, and then Illya will be left the choice between giving in or fighting. Illya is on his feet, his breathing short. He’s a moment away from bolting. Napoleon knows his partner too well. He can see that he’s about to snap.

‘Doctor, could we have a moment?’ he asks.

The doctor looks between them, then nods.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says as soon as they’re alone.

He puts his hands gently on either side of Illya’s head, stroking his thumbs lightly on his temples. He can feel the sweat in his hair. He’s like a nervous horse.

‘Illya, look at me,’ he says. ‘Come on, buddy.’

Illya doesn’t look at him. His gaze is tilted down, focussed on something across the room.

‘I can’t do this,’ he says. ‘Napoleon, I can’t do this.’

‘You can,’ Napoleon promises him.

‘I _can’t_ ,’ Illya insists. ‘I just can’t. It’s enough. I’ve had enough.’

Napoleon can feel his shaking. He drops his hands from Illya’s head and embraces him instead.

‘You can,’ he says with gentle firmness. ‘Why don’t you take the sedative, huh?’

‘No. No. I need – I need – ’

‘Okay,’ Napoleon says, rubbing a hand up and down his back. He can see how hard he’s fighting for control. ‘Never mind the sedative. Just try to breathe for a bit, yes? Slow and deep. Calm yourself down. Then you just need to get through this exam, and we can go home.’

Illya is silent. His head drops onto Napoleon’s shoulder, and he just stands there, breathing. He feels so light and thin that Napoleon doesn’t want to ever let go. He could lift him up without effort, he’s sure. He could sweep him up and carry him away from here. He wishes he could. He wishes he could just gather Illya up and take him somewhere he can be safe from everything. But the examination needs to be done. It has to be done. There could be any damage, any infection, hiding within his body. It needs to be done.

‘Just this one exam,’ Napoleon promises him. ‘Then home. Something good to eat, something mindless on the television, or you can just stay in bed. Anything. You just need to get through this one exam.’

‘All right,’ Illya says. It sounds as if the words are something solid he’s trying to force from his throat. ‘All right, Napoleon.’

 

((O))

 

Illya finally emerges with a white face, hands shaking, eyes cast down. His hair is wet, and he smells of something very strong; some kind of chemical. Napoleon wants to ask him how it went, but he doesn’t want to ask him. He doesn’t want to make Illya talk any more than he wants to. He touches Illya on the arm and tries to speak, and doesn’t know what to say. The doctor is there with him, though, and he meets Napoleon’s eyes with a grave look, then says, ‘He’s free to go home in half an hour, Mr Solo. He’s had some shots and I want him to go lie down on one of our beds for a little while.’

‘Is he all right?’ Napoleon asks, concerned, looking between his mute partner and the doctor.

‘It’s standard policy, Mr Solo, when someone’s had shots like that, for them to stay around for a little while, just to be sure there’s no adverse reaction,’ the doctor assures him.

‘Yes, of course,’ Napoleon murmurs.

It’s not, he’s sure, standard policy for someone to stay around for as long as half an hour, and even less for them to spend that time lying down rather than sitting on a waiting room chair, but he can see just by looking at Illya that this is a necessary obfuscation. He needs to lie down for a little while.

‘You can use this room,’ the doctor says, touching Illya’s arm and nodding towards the door to a private room. ‘We’re quiet today.’

Illya seems to come out of a daze, and says, ‘Yes. Yes. Thank you.’

So Napoleon walks with him into the room and smooths a hand over the sheets, and says, ‘Why don’t you hop on board?’

Illya gives the bed a sick glance, but he does as he’s told and lies down, a little on his side, his hands curled into fists and held up near his face.

‘You okay?’ Napoleon asks him gently, sitting down by the bed.

Illya doesn’t answer. He’s staring at the opposite wall, his eyes still and wide. Napoleon doesn’t know what to do or say. He wishes he could say something. Illya is so changed; thin, bearded, malnourished, withdrawn. He has washed in the showers here, scrubbing body and hair with antiseptic and insecticide, but his hair is still thickly tangled. Napoleon wants to go back to that club and line up every person who worked in that place, and shoot them, one by one. He wants to find the men that did this to him and whip them raw.

‘Do you want me to hang around or leave you alone?’ Napoleon asks.

‘Stay,’ Illya says.

‘Okay,’ Napoleon replies.

He sits there, and the quiet in the room seems to grow and grow. Illya lies very still, staring with unfocussed eyes.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says after a while, and Illya stirs a very little, but he doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t know what to say, though. He wants to talk to Illya but he has no idea what he can say.

‘I’m really tired,’ Illya says, as if he needs to excuse his lack of conversation.

‘I know,’ Napoleon replies.

Of course Illya is tired. He must be exhausted, emotionally if not physically. When he tries to imagine the pain he has been through his mind baulks and turns away. He doesn’t want to imagine that. He remembers that frozen snapshot of Illya lying on the bed in that room, sobbing, when he came through the door, and he can’t make his mind grasp the enormity, the violation, the length of time for which he was trapped there and abused like that. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to think of Illya suffering through so much pain.

There’s a sharp little rap at the door, and Illya jumps. When Waverly comes in Napoleon doesn’t know where to look. This all feels so strange.

‘Ah, Mr Kuryakin,’ Waverly says, standing just a few feet in from the doorway, looking as awkward as Napoleon feels. His eyes move over the spare furnishings in the room then settle back on Illya, taking in his physical condition but perhaps choosing not to recognise his mental state. ‘We’d almost given up hope, you know. It’s good to have you back in the fold.’

Illya keeps his eyes on the opposite wall, his hands still clenched like sea anemones curling in against attack. His lips part and he looks as if he’s trying to speak, but no sound comes out.

‘I know you’ve been through rather a lot,’ Waverly says, shifting from one foot to the other, ‘but it’s important to – ’

He breaks off momentarily as the door opens again. The doctor is there, looking exasperated, papers in his hand.

‘It’s important to take you through debriefing,’ Waverly continues. ‘I know you’ll understand that. You hold such a wealth of sensitive information. It’s important we know if you told them anything, and if you did, what.’

Napoleon wants to reach out and take Illya’s hand. He can’t make himself, and he doesn’t think Illya would be able to uncurl his fingers anyway.

‘Sir, I think – ’ he begins, but the doctor cuts over him tersely.

‘Not _now_ , Mr Waverly. No debriefing until he’s been passed by Psych, and I should think they’ll recommend doing debriefing _through_ Psych. He’s not in a fit state for any regular debriefing.’

‘I beg your pardon, Dr – er – ’ Waverly replies in an arch tone. ‘I was under the impression that I was Number One here.’

‘ _Not_ in this infirmary,’ the doctor tells him in an uncompromising tone. ‘Mr Kuryakin’s welfare is my priority. He’s going to be given the time he needs to recover.’

Napoleon glances at Illya and sees how closed in he looks, how far back he seems to be behind his eyes. His mouth is a little open but he doesn’t seem to know what words to use.

‘Sir,’ he says, touching Waverly’s arm.

He nudges with his hand just a little, not enough to seem as if he’s pushing his boss, but enough to prompt Waverly to walk with him out of the room.

‘Sir, I have to agree with the doctor,’ he says quietly as soon as they’re outside of the room. ‘You didn’t see him in that place, and you haven’t seen him in the hours since he got out. Illya is deeply traumatised. I think if you pushed him into debriefing now you be at risk of sending him over the edge.’

‘Mr Kuryakin is one of my top agents, Mr Solo,’ Waverly says, his voice just as low.

‘Yes, he is,’ Napoleon nods. ‘But not at the moment. At the moment he’s a very damaged mortal man. He’s also my partner. I have a duty to protect him, even against you.’

Waverly regards him, and Napoleon can’t quite read what’s going on in his mind. But then he nods and says, ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d try to put him back together as soon as possible, Mr Solo. When Psychiatry takes him through debriefing, I’ll be awaiting the report.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Napoleon says. It’s not often that Waverly bends.

Waverly glances at the door to Illya’s room with a look of regret, but then he nods, and he leaves. Napoleon stands there watching him walk away, then he goes back into Illya’s room, where Illya is curled on his side in the bed and the doctor’s hand is lying lightly on his shoulder. He realises that Illya is crying.

‘It’s all right, doctor,’ Napoleon tells him quietly. ‘I can stay with him.’

‘I’ll consult with Psychiatry,’ the doctor replies in a soft voice. ‘He needs a little breathing time today, I think, but it would be good to set something up as soon as possible.’

‘Yes,’ Napoleon says. ‘Yes, it would.’

‘You might want to cast your eyes over this,’ the doctor says, handing his papers to Napoleon. ‘Give them back before you go.’

He sits down next to the bed and puts his hand on Illya’s arm, and Illya lies there, eyes closed. His face is very pale, and the bruises stand out like stains on his skin. He must have been subjected to such violence. At peak fitness Illya can repay violence with deadly force, but in that room he was helpless.

He remembers the papers the doctor gave him, and looks down at them. The notes are written in a hasty, slanting hand. Typical doctor’s writing. Napoleon can read it, though, and he goes over what they say, nausea building in his stomach. Internal bruising. Tears that are starting to heal. Inflammation. Infection. Lice in his hair, which have been treated. Bed sores that need special dressings. Malnutrition. They frequently gave him laxatives, it seems, and he hasn’t had time to absorb the necessary nutrients from his gut. It’s too much to take in. It’s too much to imagine.

‘We should go home,’ Illya says abruptly, and Napoleon almost drops the report. He looks at his friend, at his pale face, and asks, ‘Are you sure? Might be better to lie down for a while longer.’

‘I want to go home,’ Illya says, and Napoleon is reminded forcefully of Illya’s desperation to go home last night, only to get home, over everything else.

‘All right,’ he says. ‘I’ll go have a word with the doctor, get you signed out. Then you can go home.’

 

((O))

 

It has been such a long day. It feels like an aeon to Napoleon, so how long must it feel for Illya? They have come home, Illya has slept and woken, his hair is brushed, his beard is finally gone. Something of him looks more like the Illya that Napoleon knows, but it’s overlaid by something else, by a kind of ghost that lingers in those bruises and burns, in the hollowness of his eyes and the thinness of his cheeks. Napoleon would like to be able to reach in and find _his_ Illya, the Illya he used to know, and take him far, far away from the ghosts.

‘I’m sorry,’ Illya says abruptly.

They’re sitting on the sofa in the living room and outside there are the sounds of cars, and sometimes sirens, and there’s a bottle of whisky on the table, but Illya has hardly touched his drink. He’s just been sitting there, staring into nothing, it seems, hardly hearing when Napoleon speaks.

‘Hmm?’ Napoleon asks, coming out of his own kind of daze. ‘What for, Illya?’

Illya rubs a hand over his chin, picking a little at the scab of a shaving cut. He broke the mirror when he shaved. Napoleon isn’t sure exactly what happened, but the mirror ended up broken, and perhaps Illya had broken too, because suddenly he was talking about, hinting about, a desire to die. That thought terrifies Napoleon. He’s saved Illya from death. He can’t bear the thought of him dying now, by his own hand.

‘I’m sorry,’ Illya says again. ‘For – I suppose for being such a mess. For – ’ He shakes his head. ‘For all of it. For – ’

He looks exhausted. Napoleon realises that there is dampness in his eyes, as if he’s holding back the need to cry.

‘Illya, you don’t need to apologise,’ he says. ‘A terrible thing happened – ’

Illya flinches, closing his eyes, turning away a little. That forces some of the water from his eyes and a tear runs down his cheek.

‘I’m so – ’ he murmurs. ‘So – I don’t know how you can look at me. I’m so filthy...’

‘Illya, we’ve both been held by Thrush before,’ Napoleon says softly but firmly. ‘We’ve both been helpless. It’s not your fault that they did that to you. You were raped. You were chained to that bed and you couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t defend yourself in any way. Nothing about this is your fault.’

He is still and silent, and then eventually he says, ‘I’m all right now. I’m home. I should be all right. I don’t know why I’m not all right…’

‘Because this time yesterday I was driving you home after you’d been in that place for weeks,’ Napoleon tells him gently. ‘Because you’ve been treated horrifically, and you’re not going to get over it in a day.’

‘I’m so tired,’ Illya murmurs, still looking away from Napoleon.

Napoleon puts a hand gently on his arm. ‘Come to bed,’ he says. ‘Tomorrow will be a new day.’

 

((O))

 

It should feel like a new day, but it doesn’t. Illya is sitting near the window, his eyes focussed somewhere past the glass, rocking. His fingers are clawed into his palm. At that angle his cheekbones look so sharp. His whole face looks thin, his head like a skull.

Napoleon brings him a cup of coffee and puts it down on the windowsill. Illya doesn’t seem to notice the movement right next to his face.

‘Hey,’ Napoleon says, putting a hand lightly on his shoulder.

Illya jumps, and his eyes come into focus.

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Coffee. Yes. Thank you, Napoleon.’

‘I put cream in it,’ Napoleon tells him, ‘to help fatten you up.’

‘Thank you,’ Illya murmurs. He doesn’t look as if he cares a jot about cream, or fattening up, or even the coffee in front of him. He hardly ate the breakfast that Napoleon cooked, or touched the coffee he made then.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says softly, and he lightly strokes a hand over his shoulder. ‘Come on, buddy. Drink up. Talk to me. It won’t help to sit here dwelling.’

Illya flinches. Suddenly he stuffs a fist into his mouth, and he’s sobbing around it, his whole body shaking. His breath is ragged, and when he takes his fist from his mouth it’s wet and marked deeply with the imprints of his teeth. Napoleon takes it and wipes it off with his handkerchief, seeing that he’s bitten so deeply that the marks are purple, and spotted with the brightness of blood.

‘Shower,’ Illya says abruptly through the sobs. ‘I need to shower.’

Napoleon lets him go. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s not qualified to deal with the immensity of Illya’s pain. He thinks that perhaps showering should be gently discouraged, because Illya is entirely clean, but the need is so strong he doesn’t think he could stop him. He sits and listens to the hiss and spray of water, and everything churns inside him.

He takes out his communicator and calls headquarters. He checks the time of Illya’s appointment with the psychiatrist, simultaneously dreading trying to get him in, and anticipating him finally getting desperately needed help. He speaks to Waverly about when he needs to come back on duty. This is already duty, isn’t it, supporting his traumatised partner? But it’s not duty enough, perhaps, because the most Waverly can allow him is three days.

‘We’re already an agent down, Mr Solo, and have been for months. I’m sorry. I can’t spare you for longer than that. There are things afoot in India.’

India… He feels as if the bottom has dropped out of his stomach. India is so, so far away, halfway around the world. There’s always a chance on a mission that he won’t come back. It will be terrible to leave Illya. But – He can hear Illya crying through the noise of the shower. He feels so terribly oppressed by how hard this is. India is far away, but Illya’s experience feels further away than India. Perhaps in the next few days the psychiatrist will help Illya back to something like an even keel, and India will be all right. He knows how to handle guns and subterfuge far better than an unravelling mind.

He goes into the bathroom after half an hour, eyeing the broken mirror on the wall. He’ll take it all down properly today, throw the shards away, and leave the space blank. He doesn’t think it will help to put up a new mirror. Not yet.

Illya is a shadowy form behind the shower curtain, and the water is still falling around him, hissing and splattering off the plasticised curtain.

‘Hey,’ Napoleon says over the shower, and Illya moves enough to let him know he has heard.

‘Time to get out,’ Napoleon tells him, gathering up his bathrobe. ‘Illya. It’s time to get out. I want you to come eat something.’

Slowly, Illya moves. He turns the water off and stands there, dripping. Napoleon edges the curtain back and tries not to let his eyes linger on the thinness and bruising. There’s a dullness in Illya’s eyes. Napoleon holds out a hand to help him step from the bathtub, and puts the bathrobe around him.

‘Are you all right, Illya?’ he asks him gently.

Illya manufactures a smile. It doesn’t reach any further than his lips, but it’s an attempt, at least. Hasn’t Napoleon heard somewhere that the physical act of smiling makes a person feel better? That if they smile enough, in the end their brain will take notice? Maybe he can spend all day trying to make Illya smile.

‘I’m all right,’ Illya says, but his eyes are still not quite reaching Napoleon’s face.

‘Hungry?’

‘Yes,’ Illya says. ‘Yes, I’d like to eat something. Something solid and warm. It’s been – ’

Napoleon doesn’t like to think about how long it has been; how long he was existing on scraps given to him grudgingly by his captors. It was too long.

‘I’ll cook you up something solid and warm for lunch,’ he promises. ‘You can help me.’

There’s that smile again, and it looks a bit more real this time. There’s a softening in Illya’s body, a loosening in his limbs. For a moment their eyes make contact, and it’s like the moment on the Sistine Chapel ceiling when God and Adam’s fingertips touch. Fleeting, but undeniable.

Napoleon pulls him in and hugs him close. Again, he feels so insubstantial beneath the thick towelling of the bathrobe. It’s as if he’s hardly there.

‘It’ll be all right,’ he says softly into Illya’s ear. ‘I promise you. It will be all right.’

Illya doesn’t answer. Napoleon feels such a weight of guilt. He’s here now, but in a few days he’ll be gone, and there’s no chance that a few days will be enough to make things right. He wonders if Illya would agree to check into the infirmary when Napoleon leaves, but he’s pretty sure that’s never going to happen. Illya has always preferred the private comforts of home.

He squeezes his arms around Illya, just holding him. He had thought that he was dead. He had been so afraid that he was dead. This is better than him being dead, surely, but it’s such a hard thing to witness from the outside.

He wonders what happened at the club after they found Lee dead and Illya gone. Someone must have ended up very angry that evening. Perhaps the upper echelons of Thrush had thought Illya was dead too, and very soon they’ll find out he was alive. They won’t be able to punish Lee. He’s beyond that. Napoleon hopes they’ll rain down their fury on the rest of the club, though. Maybe they’ll take each complicit person and destroy them. It’s no more than they deserve.

 

((O))

 

It’s very early in the morning when Napoleon has to leave. His flight is at ten, and he needs to attend his briefing with Waverly before that, and gather together everything needed for this affair. His alarm trills into the air at six, and he lies there blinking into the darkness for a moment before he remembers yet again that he’s sleeping at Illya’s place, not his own well-appointed apartment.

He drags himself out of bed and makes coffee and toast, and sits in the kitchen eating. It’s hard to focus on the thought of going away. All of his thoughts have been so intensely angled in on Illya for the last few days, driving him to appointments in the Infirmary, making him his meals, trying to keep his head above water. He’s not sure the doctors there really understand the depth of Illya’s pain. He’s a notoriously bad patient, and he surely won’t have told the psychiatrists a tenth as much as he’s told Napoleon. But he won’t tell Napoleon what’s gone on in the sessions, either, so he’s working with nothing.

He wanders around the kitchen, slice of toast in hand, checking what’s in the fridge and the cupboards. Illya will have to go out at some point to buy more food. He can’t protect him from that forever, but he can make it easier for him. He takes a hundred dollars from a sheaf in his wallet and thinks where to leave it. Somewhere Illya will find it soon enough. If he tries to give it to him directly he will refuse.

He puts it in the tea tin and writes a brief note to leave in there with it. Illya will make himself tea at some point during the day, and he’ll find the money. That will give him the freedom to get takeout, or at least to go to the store on the corner, or pay for a cab. It’s all, really, that he can do. There’s no one else Illya would be happy to have staying with him, so he’ll have to manage alone.

He swallows the rest of the coffee and finishes the toast, then goes to shave, facing the blank space on the bathroom wall where the mirror used to be. He dresses himself and makes sure he has all he needs in his suitcase, and then he’s ready to go.

He doesn’t want to go. He goes into Illya’s bedroom and looks down at him in the bed. He’s fast asleep, pale-faced, still too thin. The bruises are starting to heal, but he’s still too thin. Napoleon tries to convince himself that he’ll be fine on his own. He’s an adult. He’s lived alone for years. He’ll be able to look after himself. Maybe being on his own for a while will be good for him. Maybe it will help him snap out of this terrible place.

He crouches, and puts a hand lightly on Illya’s arm. He has to be very careful about waking him, because Illya has grown used to being woken only to be subjected to terrible things.

‘Illya,’ he says softly, and Illya moves and murmurs in the bed. ‘Don’t wake up. It’s early,’ Napoleon tells him. ‘I have to go now. Will you be all right?’

‘Mmm,’ Illya mumbles, his eyes blinking open a little. ‘Yes. All right.’

‘Good,’ Napoleon tells him. ‘Look after yourself, won’t you, partner? Keep going for your appointments. I’ll call in when I can.’

‘All right, Napoleon,’ Illya says sleepily. ‘Don’t worry. Be all right.’

‘Okay,’ Napoleon says, and he twitches the covers up a little more over Illya’s shoulder, and leans over to lightly kiss his golden hair. ‘Go back to sleep now. I’ll see you when I’m back.’

 

((O))

 

Hyderabad is mercilessly hot, humid, beautiful, busy, foreign. He misses Illya at his side. He’s been going on missions without him for a while, while Illya was missing, trying to focus on his assignment while he was away, spending all the time he could when he was back searching for Illya. Now he knows where he is, but he’s almost as worried as he had been when he was missing.

He has to focus on his work, though. A slip could leave him dead, and then he’ll never come back to Illya. He spent almost a day in the air, making connections, just getting to this place, and he tried to call Illya when he could, but never got an answer. Even though Illya is an adult, even though he’s one of the most capable people he knows, he’s worried about him because he’s not answering his communicator, if nothing else. But he’s so far away here and there isn’t much he can do. If he sent someone round to check on him, Illya would be mortified.

Then he’s in the city and every moment is centred around tracking down leads, identifying his marks, making plans. He wishes Illya were here to make plans with him, to be his backup. He wishes he were back home to keep him from drowning.

It’s half past eight in the morning before he finally manages to get through, and he’s spent an uneasy, sweltering night in a hotel room with broken air conditioning, sleeping with his gun in his hand and his shoes where he can jump straight into them, trying to call Illya at ungodly hours when the heat and stress pulled him out of sleep. Finally, rubbing the sleep from his eyes at half past eight, the cheeping of the communicator is answered.

‘Kuryakin.’

Illya sounds exhausted.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says in relief. _Thank god_ , he thinks. ‘I was calling to see how you are. I called a couple of times earlier?’

‘Oh. I was – asleep,’ Illya says. He sounds as if he’s woken from sleep, slurred and muddled. ‘It must be hot where you are.’

‘Yeah, it’s pretty hot,’ Napoleon says. That’s an understatement. He feels as if he’s sitting in an oven, and it’s barely morning. ‘But it must be hot at home. How are you, Illya? How are you doing?’

‘Oh, I – ’ There’s a pause, and Napoleon waits. He can almost feel the gears turning in Illya’s mind. He must have been asleep. ‘Yes, I’m fine. I’m all right. I went for groceries. I’ve had a shower.’

Napoleon frowns, rubbing his eyes again. There’s something not quite right in Illya’s voice. Nothing is right at the moment, of course. Nothing at all.

‘Have you eaten?’ Napoleon asks.

‘Yes, of course,’ Illya replies with a laugh that sounds odd and forced. ‘I always eat. You know that.’

‘Three meals, Illya,’ Napoleon says sternly. ‘Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.’

‘Of course. You know I always eat,’ Illya says.

He’s so far away. Napoleon wishes he could see him, at least. If only someone would invent a communicator with a screen. Illya is a consummate liar, but not to Napoleon.

‘All right,’ he says, because there isn’t a screen and there isn’t anything to do but take Illya’s word for it. ‘All right. I wanted to be sure, because you weren’t eating so well when I left. Get take out if you need to, won’t you? I left a hundred dollars in the tea tin in the kitchen so you have cash. You must have found that by now, yes?’

‘Yes,’ Illya says. ‘Yes, of course. Thank you, Napoleon.’

‘Make sure you have dinner. And go to sleep at a sensible time. It must be late there.’

He tries to work it out in his mind. Ten hours. Ten and a half hours, he thinks. It’s such a long way away. It’s been too long a night for him to easily do the maths, but it’s evening for Illya while it’s morning for him.

‘Yes, it’s – ’

Silence. That long thinking time again, something that Illya almost never succumbs to when he’s on top form. He can calculate in a snap, and it certainly doesn’t take him this long to read a clock.

‘Illya?’ Napoleon asks. He feels as if his friend has drifted away.

‘Oh,’ Illya says, as if he had forgotten that he was talking. ‘Yes. It’s ten o’clock. Yes, it’s late.’

‘Illya, have you had dinner?’ Napoleon asks clearly, trying to push through the static. The static is all in Illya’s mind.

‘No, not yet,’ Illya says vaguely. ‘I bought some things for dinner.’

‘Have dinner,’ Napoleon tells him. ‘Take the sleeping pills the doctor gave you. Try to get a good night’s rest.’

‘Yes,’ Illya says. ‘Yes, of course I will. You don’t need to worry, Napoleon. You fuss so much.’

He almost laughs at that. He feels a little hysterical. How can he not worry? He’s so far away from Illya, and so powerless to help him.

‘All right,’ he says gently. ‘I’ll let you go, Illya. Go eat, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Illya says. ‘Yes, I’ll eat. Don’t worry.’

‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ Napoleon says. He flicks a look at his watch. Time is creeping by, and he needs to be out in the streets, doing his job. He needs to be able to focus. ‘Listen, I have to go. Ciao, bella.’

He hears Illya’s murmured goodbye, and shuts off the communicator. He sits there for a moment, rubbing at the stubble on his chin. He has so much to do. He needs to be able to switch his mind off from Illya and turn it onto the mission. But it’s so hard.

 

((O))

 

He’s so busy that he hardly has time to think of Illya. Still, he thinks about him. He wishes he had backup. He wishes he could talk over the case, ask his advice, make plans. He makes all his plans alone, because Illya is the only person he trusts to know what’s right for each situation. There’s no one else to call. All of his communications with Headquarters are dry and factual, or faced with empty flirting with office girls whose names he struggles to remember. He makes a date with one of them but doesn’t know if either of them will carry it through when he gets back.

He calls in when he can, and every time Illya seems distracted and vague, but as if he’s somehow holding things together. He must be eating, he thinks. He must be looking after himself enough. He should have had one or two appointments with the psychiatrist by now, and they would be able to pick up if he wasn’t managing to care for himself. But Illya is a consummate liar… Maybe there are things that the psychiatrists will never know.

Still, he has hopes when he calls him this time, if only because his own mission is going well. He escaped capture today by a hair’s breadth, and that always sends the adrenaline surging. He always gets a sense of euphoria when he’s escaped unharmed. It’s late at night and he should be trying to sleep, but he knows he won’t be able to sleep until the buzz has subsided.

‘ _Tovarisch,_ how’s things?’ he asks as soon as Illya answers his call. He’d like to tell him about the mission. Maybe hearing about that will perk him up.

‘Bad,’ Illya replies simply. There’s something terrible in that voice, in that single word, and Napoleon’s euphoria collapses in on itself like a soap bubble, popped.

‘Bad? What’s happened, Illya? Did you have a bad night?’

‘I slept well,’ Illya says. ‘I slept well.’

He’s heard something like that tone in Illya’s voice before. It picks at a memory in him, a memory of Illya trying to bear up under torture, Illya in great pain.

‘What’s bad, Illya?’ he asks. ‘What is it?’

God, he’s so, so far away...

‘I – I did something stupid,’ Illya says. ‘Really stupid.’

His voice dissolves into a hacking cough. It’s still oppressively hot here, but Napoleon feels his blood run cold. That coughing is an awful sound.

‘What?’ he asks sharply. ‘Illya, have you taken something? Illya? _’_

‘No. No, I – ’ He’s talking around coughs, his voice distant through the mesh end of the communicator, so very far away. ‘I felt so dirty. I felt so – I got the bleach from the toilet, and – ’

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says. God. Has Illya drunk it? Has he swallowed the bleach? God… That’s a terrible way to die, and it always ends in death. He feels like screaming, but he has to wait for Illya to talk to him.

‘I w-washed myself with it,’ Illya says. His voice is shaking with tears. ‘I need so badly to be clean...’

He breathes in and out. _Washed myself with it_. So he hasn’t ingested it. That’s good. Thank god, he hasn’t ingested it. With the information he needed, Napoleon suddenly feels calm, but under the calm is a surging fear.

‘Illya, hold the channel open,’ he says.

He doesn’t wait for Illya to answer. He clicks the end of the communicator and requests a channel directly to headquarters. Some woman answers, ‘Oh, Mr Solo, I’ve been longing to – ’

‘I need the Infirmary,’ he snaps over her moonstruck words. ‘Now.’

Immediately, she is professional. ‘Right away, Mr Solo,’ she says, and then the voice is another woman, speaking in a different tone.

‘Infirmary. Mr Solo, what did you need?’

‘I want you to send an ambulance to Mr Kuryakin’s address,’ he says clearly and smoothly. ‘Right away.’

‘What’s the situation, Mr Solo?’ she asks. Thank god for professionalism.

‘He’s hurt himself,’ he says. He doesn’t want to disclose this, but he has to. ‘He says he washed himself with bleach.’

He resists adding anything else, any explanations or excuses. They know in the Infirmary what Illya has been through.

‘Okay, Mr Solo. We’ll dispatch someone right away. Are you on the line to him?’

‘Yeah, I was,’ he nods. ‘I switched over to call the doctor.’

‘All right,’ she says. ‘Well, the doctor is on his way. Switch back to Mr Kuryakin, and keep talking to him. We’ll be there as soon as is possible.’

He breathes out, feeling as if he were deflating. Suddenly he feels exhausted. He clicks back the connection to Illya, and says, ‘All right, Illya. There’s a doctor on the way from headquarters. When he comes I need you to open the door for him. Do you understand that? Have you got that, Illya?’

‘Yes,’ Illya says. He’s still crying. ‘Yes, I know I’ve been stupid. I know it was stupid. Чорт, but it hurts...’

It must hurt. It must hurt terribly. Napoleon feels so far away.

‘You’ll let him in?’ he asks.

‘I’ll let him in,’ Illya says.

‘All right, Illya,’ Napoleon says, trying to sound calm, to be something stable for Illya to cling to. ‘Illya, have you washed it off your skin?’

‘Yes.’ His voice is rough with the coughing and crying. ‘Yes, I went in the shower again.’

‘Good,’ Napoleon says. ‘That’s good.’

A sob erupts at the other end of the communicator. ‘Napoleon, am I going mad?’

He doesn’t know what to say. What does he say to that? His partner has just told him that he’s washed himself in bleach. He sits there, mouth open, staring at the city view through his window, at the dark foreign sky and the silhouettes of foreign buildings and all the lights in the other windows, where other people are living their lives.

‘You’re in pain,’ he says.

He hopes he wasn’t silent for too long, but instead of replying, Illya’s sobs come harder and stronger, and he doesn’t know what to do.

‘God, Illya,’ Napoleon says. He wants to reach through the communicator and hold him in his arms. ‘Jesus. Listen – Illya, don’t cry, don’t – ’

Another sound interrupts the crying. It’s the distinctive, harsh sound of retching, the horrible sound of something splattering on the floor.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon calls.

Why isn’t the doctor there yet? When is that damn doctor going to be there? He thinks of the route from HQ to Illya’s apartment, thinks of the likely traffic at that time of day. Why isn’t he there yet?

‘ _Illya!_ ’ he calls again.

‘Yes,’ Illya says thickly, panting. ‘I’m all right. Sick. Just sick.’

‘Illya, go and get some water,’ Napoleon tells him very clearly. ‘Drink some water. Go now, okay?’

‘Yes.’

He can hear Illya moving. He hears the trickle and splash of tap water, the sound of swallowing.

‘Illya, are you okay?’ Napoleon asks.

‘Yes,’ Illya says. His voice is shaking. ‘Yes, I’m okay.’

Distantly, there’s a low buzz, then Illya says, ‘I think he’s here.’

‘Go and answer the door,’ Napoleon tells him. ‘Illya, let him in.’

He stands up and stares out through the window, as he hears Illya moving. How he wishes he wasn’t so far away. The voices in the street below sound so alien. He hears the door open on the other end of the communicator, hears Illya talking to someone, and then there’s a new voice.

‘Mr Solo. He’ll be all right now.’

He breathes out, hard. ‘Is he badly hurt?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know the full extent yet,’ the doctor says. He’s hardly likely to give a full report into Illya’s condition, so soon, and over a communicator. ‘He has chemical burns, of course, but I’ll need to examine him properly once he’s back at the Infirmary. It looks like he washed it off, which is in his favour.’

‘Yes, he said he washed it off,’ Napoleon says. He feels curiously weak and tired, as if he’s just sprinted a long way. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ll call in later to find out how he is. I’ll let you go look after him now.’

‘Thank you, Mr Solo,’ the doctor says, then he adds kindly, ‘Don’t worry. He’ll be all right.’

He sits there after the doctor has gone, watching the street below. It’s so late that the hubbub of daytime has died away, but there are still people out there, there are still voices, the occasional snatch of song, the low of a cow or the bark of a dog. If only he could drop all of this and get on a plane. But Illya is one man, and against the mission in Hyderabad his life is nothing. At least, it’s nothing to the men who make those little marks on paper, tallying up agents lost against victories scored.

 

((O))

 

He calls Illya as soon as he can after he’s taken in to the Infirmary, but he’s told by the doctor that he can’t speak to him right now. He feels further away than ever, denied even the chance to talk to his friend. Everything is wrong; the time, the food, the smell of the air. He craves Manhattan. He craves home.

‘He’s suffering from very deep depression,’ the doctor tells him gravely, and Napoleon thinks, _Then why won’t you let me talk to him? Why won’t you let me help?_

‘I promised him I’d call,’ he says, but the doctor is implacable.

‘I’ll let him know that you’ve called. You’ll be able to talk to him tomorrow, Mr Solo, but not right now. He’s been transferred from the medical section into the psychiatric department, and he isn’t up to talking to you at the moment. He’s medicated and he’s very tired, and he’s having enough trouble talking to the doctors.’

‘All right,’ Napoleon says. ‘Okay.’

He pushes his finger back and forth over his bottom lip. There won’t be a way to get around this and talk to Illya. Any calls will have to be put through the board in the Infirmary. He has no choice. He can’t bear the image in his head that the doctor’s words conjure, though. Illya, so depressed that he can hardly talk. He wants to somehow make everything right again.

‘How is he?’ he asks.

‘Physically, he’s suffered burns from the bleach in varying degrees on different areas of his body. He’s in a fair amount of pain, but we’re doing what we can for him. The physical pain, that is. His mental pain is a great deal worse.’

That feels like a skewer in his gut, but he asks, ‘What medications is he on?’ The more he knows about this the more in control he will feel.

‘Aside from the painkillers, antidepressants, of course, and for tonight he’s been given a sedative. I want him to get some restorative sleep. He hasn’t been eating or sleeping well of late.’

There’s a note of censure in the doctor’s tone, and Napoleon wants to protest that it isn’t his fault, that he did all he could. Of course it isn’t his fault. He can’t make Illya eat all the way from India. He did his best.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Antidepressants, and a sedative. How long will the antidepressants take to work?’

_Why wasn’t he put on them days ago?_ he wants to ask. But there’s no point in asking. He wasn’t put on them. Illya hates to take drugs, he knows. He would do anything he could to disguise his need from the doctors, or to avoid seeing the doctors altogether.

‘Effectively?’ the doctor asks. ‘It can take up to a month before we really start seeing results, Mr Solo. The medication will be paired with intensive psychiatric sessions. It’s hard, Mr Solo,’ he says, his voice softening. ‘I know it’s very hard looking in from the outside. We can do everything we can to help Mr Kuryakin, but ultimately it’s his fight to win. And he will win, I’m sure of it. But he’s been through horrors. We both know that. Only he knows the full depth of those horrors.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Napoleon says. If only he could reach into Illya’s mind and know everything. But he’s afraid, terribly afraid, of knowing everything. He’s afraid it would be too much to bear.

‘You’re an active agent on an active mission, Mr Solo,’ the doctor tells him. ‘Try to focus on your current situation. Trust us to look after Mr Kuryakin for now.’

 

((O))

 

It’s an exhausting few days. For thirteen hours Napoleon is tied up in a foetid dark room in the back of a leather tannery, hardly able to breathe for the smell, trying to work the ropes from his wrists and wishing that Illya were there to talk to, if not to help him out of the situation. He doesn’t know if he’s suffering concussion or not from the blow to the temple that led to him finding himself tied up in that place, but his head aches enough and his stomach is churning enough that he can believe it. Or maybe it’s just the smell that’s making his stomach churn, and the throbbing lump on his head that’s making it ache.

In the end he works the rope from his wrists and manages to sidle out of the room he’s in, past the awful tanning vats that he was afraid would be his final destination, and into the complex hidden somewhere inside the tangle of ramshackle buildings. Inside, nothing is ramshackle and everything is air conditioned. In here, it’s cool, and the only lingering scent of tanning comes from Napoleon’s clothes. But it’s very early in the morning and no one is there. Thrush in Hyderabad are over-confident and self-important, and that’s worked to Napoleon’s advantage this whole time, until he was knocked over the head by a grunt of a guard, and tied up in the tannery, probably to await orders from someone further up the food chain.

Somehow Napoleon manages to get in, find the documents that he needs, and sabotage the computer system that has been left unguarded. That, he thinks, will be the end of Thrush in Hyderabad. He’s done a lot of sneaking and spying and thievery over the last few days. He hasn’t needed to kill anyone. He hasn’t even had to blow anything up. Illya would be disappointed.

The thought of Illya is like a blow to the stomach. He hasn’t checked in for over a day. He hasn’t been able to. He hasn’t spoken to Illya at all since he was admitted to the psychiatric department. He calls in as soon as he’s safely away from the complex, letting Waverly know that the mission was successful, then piggybacking through to the Infirmary to speak to Illya. But Illya is in a counselling session, and he can’t speak to him. He speaks to the doctor instead. By the time Illya’s finished in counselling Napoleon will be on an aeroplane, on his way home. _No_ , the doctor tells him. _He’ll be tired after his session, and have a lot to think about. The last thing he will need is more talking_.

The plane doesn’t feel fast enough. Napoleon makes the most of the time by sleeping, something that’s been in short supply of late. It feels so good to sleep, the soft droning of the engines resonating through the air, humming through the fabric of the seat he is in. He feels safe for the first time in days, and lets relaxation take him.

He’s surprisingly fresh when he reaches JFK. It’s the middle of the night and the taxi rank is barren, but U.N.C.L.E. have sent out a car, so he sits on yet another softly resonating seat and watches the city pass by. He remembers bringing Illya back through the city in his car, after getting him from the club. He remembers the scent of him, the bones prominent in his wrists, the burn and bruises on his face, the filthy beard and lank hair. He remembers the look in his eyes, like an urban pond, sheened with oil, reflective, hiding terrible things.

It doesn’t matter that it’s the middle of the night. He will get into HQ, dump the papers to deal with in the morning, and go to the Infirmary. Illya will be asleep and he won’t be able to see him, but he can doss down on an empty bed, maybe, and wait for morning. So he locks the papers in the filing cabinet in his office and steps out into the corridor.

‘Oh, hi, Napoleon. Back from – Afghanistan, was it?’

It’s Geoff Pinter, one of the other agents, obviously on his way to do his own paperwork in the small hours of the night. He has folders tucked under his arm, and a bruise down the side of his face. Napoleon touches the bruise under his own hair in remembrance.

‘India. You’ve been away a long while, haven’t you?’ he asks curiously. ‘I haven’t seen you around.’

‘Only down in New Mexico, but I was there for six months,’ Pinter shrugs. ‘Far enough away for me. Are you looking for your partner? I just saw him heading up to the roof.’

Something clicks hard inside. _Illya? Heading up to the roof?_ Pinter probably has no idea that Illya is supposed to be in the Infirmary.

‘It’s good you’re back,’ Pinter adds. ‘He looks like he could do with a bit of looking after.’

Napoleon doesn’t stop to reply or explain. He’s already turning down the corridor, the fear in him so huge and cold that it’s hard to bear. There’s only one access point to the roof, and he breaks from a walk into a run, driven on by an instinct more than anything else.

‘Jesus, Illya,’ he mutters as he slams up against the roof door, jabs in the code, and barrels through. He takes the stairs two at a time, bangs open the door at the top, and stares around, panting.

He’s there. There he is like a diver on the top board, a silhouette against the flashing and glittering lights that come from the buildings around. He’s tilting. Napoleon sees that as if time has been slowed down. He sees Illya starting to lose his balance, starting to pitch forward.

He runs. He grabs Illya in a bear hug, clenching at him, wrenching him back off the ledge, so that he drops not to the street below but the couple of feet to the flat roof, suddenly limp in Napoleon’s arms.

‘Illya, Illya...’ He holds Illya so hard that his arms ache, his heart drumming as if it’s about to burst from his chest, the bruise on his head throbbing. ‘Jesus Christ, Illya. Jesus.’

He turns Illya around, never letting go of him, staring into his face, pulling him even closer. He presses his lips against the cool skin of Illya’s temple, kissing him because he is beautiful and alive.

‘Please,’ Illya says, and he sounds utterly broken. ‘Just let me – ’

‘ _No_ ,’ Napoleon says, suddenly overwhelmed with anger. He shakes Illya, holding his arms hard enough to bruise. The fury is like an explosion. ‘No, don’t you dare. Illya Nikolayevich Kuryakin, don’t you _dare_.’

He’s not sure how he gets Illya inside, if Illya is resisting or being dragged along like flotsam in the tide. But he gets him into the stairwell and locks the door behind them, and makes Illya sit on the warm concrete stairs. He crouches there in front of him, afraid to let go. He draws Illya into a tight hug again, holding him, wishing he could hold him harder, kissing the fine blond hair at the side of his head. He feels ready to collapse, but it is Illya who seems to be disintegrating.

‘Jesus Christ, Illya,’ he says. ‘Do you know how close you were?’

Illya is weeping as if he is utterly broken, as if his entire body is possessed by grief. Napoleon wipes the tears from his cheeks with his fingertips, but it’s like trying to stop the tide.

‘Illya, you are _not_ going to keep feeling like this,’ Napoleon says clearly, over the sobs. ‘Listen to me. You’re not going to keep feeling like this. The antidepressants take time to work, okay? Do you understand that? Are you taking this in?’

It’s as if Illya has suffered a blow to the head. He seems dazed. Then he says, ‘I thought you were in India...’

‘I got back a couple hours ago. Jesus, Illya, if I hadn’t bumped into Geoff in the corridor I wouldn’t have known you were up here. Illya – You’d have been – You would have been – ’

It’s too awful. In his head he sees Illya storeys below, flat on the street, a pool of blood around his body. He’s seen people who have fallen that far. It’s never pretty. They never survive.

There are tears on his own face. Somehow, his cheeks are wet and his nose is threatening to run.

‘Illya, listen to me,’ he says.

He wipes his face with the back of his hand, wiping away the tears. Illya’s face is shining in the stairwell light. He keeps hold of Illya, though. He’s so afraid that if he lets go of him he’ll bolt, even though he seems to have lost all of his energy.

‘I spoke to your doctor yesterday through comms,’ he says. ‘He told me you were on antidepressants, but that they take time to work.’ He’s not sure he’s getting through to him. Illya’s eyes are filmed with tears, focussing on nothing at all. ‘Illya, _listen_ ,’ he says, shaking him a little. ‘He told me they give you a little more energy before they start to lift the depression. He said there’s a greater risk of suicide because you’re still depressed but you have the energy to put a plan into action. Are you listening to me? Are you understanding this?’

He tries desperately to see something in Illya; a connection, or some kind of sign that he’s actually heard. After a long pause Illya nods. It looks as if his head is made of lead, as if he can hardly move it on his shoulders. Napoleon feels a welling of empathy so strong that it hurts.

‘Illya, I’m going to take you back to the Infirmary,’ Napoleon says, because Illya looks exhausted, because he needs to be in the Infirmary, because he just tried to kill himself and Napoleon doesn’t know what else to do. ‘Okay? Come on, can you stand up for me?’

He puts his hand under Illya’s arm, in the living heat of him there, lifting him upright. When he walks his feet stumble and scrape on the stairs, as if he can barely lift them from the ground.

‘Back to bed,’ Napoleon tells him. ‘That’s it.’

What will they do with him in the Infirmary? Help him, he hopes. But he has a sudden awful vision of Illya strapped to his bed with soft cuffs, Illya drugged into helplessness. He doesn’t know how they’ll treat a suicidal agent, a man who is determined and versed in so many methods of death.

Illya blinks like a nocturnal creature in the corridor, wavering on his feet, walking only because Napoleon makes him walk. He seems anything but determined right now. His face is colourless, his eyes dead.

Napoleon gets him into the elevator and says, ‘You’ll be all right. I promise you, Illya. You’re going to be all right. Give the medication time to work. Give the counselling time to work.’

Suddenly Illya is collapsing down to the floor, sobbing, his words almost impossible to catch. Napoleon crouches down with him, puts his arms around him and holds him again, rocking him, trying to somehow pass his strength into Illya’s body.

‘I’m so dirty, Napoleon,’ Illya sobs into his shoulder. ‘I can’t bear it. I can’t bear the memories. I can’t bear what they did to me…’

Someone must have called the elevator, because it stops too soon and the doors slide open. Napoleon doesn’t even look up to see who is there. He just holds Illya as his sobs resound from the metal walls, and the elevator starts to move again, finally stopping at the right floor.

‘Time,’ Napoleon tells him softly. ‘You have to give it time, Illya. You have to let people help you.’

He gets Illya to his feet and walks him down to the Infirmary, where a nurse is snoozing behind the desk. He kicks the desk as he walks past, too angry, too worried about Illya, to bother with pleasantries. He kicks the desk hard enough to wake the nurse up, and she comes to suddenly, blearily, staring at the pair as Napoleon walks Illya on down into Psych. By the time they get to Illya’s room they’ve attracted the attention of a doctor as well as the nurse. They’re hovering around, trying to get to Illya, the nurse holding pyjamas like an offering. Napoleon doesn’t want to let him go.

‘Let me,’ he says in a low voice, and he turns to Illya and says gently, ‘All right. Top off. That’s it.’

As he strips the top off he sees the wounds on his arms. His whole torso is patched with chemical burns, but he’s scratched his arms until the sores bled, and the dried blood is sticking in the fabric of his sleeves. While Illya stands swaying and Napoleon unbuttons his trousers and eases them down, the nurse is tutting over the wounds and the doctor is saying, ‘They’ll be all right for now. Don’t worry. We can see to them in a little while.’

He gets Illya into loose pyjamas, and gently lowers him to sit on the bed.

‘Come on, get in,’ he says. ‘There’s a boy. That’s it. Let me tuck you up, and you can go to sleep.’

He glances at the doctor. The doctor is tapping air out of a hypodermic, and he comes and pushes up the loose sleeve of Illya’s pyjama top, and gives him a swift injection.

‘Where did you find him?’ he asks Napoleon, and Napoleon says bitterly, ‘On the roof, Doctor, a half-second from letting himself fall.’

The nurse hisses in shock, and the doctor’s eyes seem to deepen.

‘Suicidal,’ the doctor says, glancing down at Illya, who is lying in bed with his eyes only half open.

‘Oh, is that what they call it?’ Napoleon asks dryly, the anger starting to seethe again.

‘We’ll need to put someone in here with him overnight,’ the doctor says. ‘We need to keep him under observation.’

‘I can watch him,’ Napoleon says instantly, and catches the doctor’s sceptical look.

‘Mr Solo, you must be exhausted. How long was the flight from India?’

‘I took First Class. I slept a lot,’ Napoleon says sharply. ‘It’s the middle of the day for me and I’m probably more awake than your staff. More awake than the girl on the desk, that’s for sure.’

His voice is cutting. He means it to be cutting. If it hadn’t been for blind chance, Illya would be dead now. The nurse looks stricken, but he doesn’t care.

‘All right,’ the doctor says. ‘I’ll have someone check in every few hours. If he needs the toilet, go with him. Stand with him. He doesn’t get privacy right now. He needs to be watched. Okay?’

‘Yes, I understand the procedure, Doctor,’ Napoleon says.

Illya stirs a little in the bed, his lips moving as if he wants to say something. His eyes are fluttering open and closed. He murmurs, ‘’Poleon.’

Napoleon takes his hand, giving him all of his attention. It’s a warm night, but Illya feels cold.

‘All right, _tovarisch_ ,’ Napoleon assures him. ‘Go to sleep. I’m not going anywhere.’

He takes the seat next to the bed and strokes Illya’s forehead, smoothing back his fringe, stroking over and over again with regular softness. Illya’s eyes flutter closed, open, closed again. He struggles to keep them open for a moment, and they lock onto Napoleon’s. A lump comes into Napoleon’s throat, so hard it pushes tears from his eyes. Illya’s body relaxes, and softly he enters asleep.

‘All right,’ Napoleon says in a low hiss as soon as Illya is fully gone, catching the doctor’s arm and taking him over towards the door. ‘I want to know how the _hell_ this happened. I was told yesterday that he might be suicidal. How in God’s name did he manage to get all the way out of the Infirmary and up to the roof without anyone – _anyone_ – seeing him?’

‘Suicidal feelings are a possibility in the early days of treatment,’ the doctor says in a low voice. ‘But Mr Kuryakin wasn’t expressing anything like that to the psychiatrist.’

Napoleon tuts derisively. ‘If the psychiatrist was worth his salt he’d know enough about Illya’s character to know he would never admit something like that to him. Couldn’t he _see_ how far gone he was?’

‘Mr Solo, it isn’t that simple,’ the doctor tells him. ‘A mistake was made. I’m sorry about that. But it is never that simple. Mr Kuryakin is an agent, and a highly intelligent man. He’s skilled in subterfuge.’

‘He walked out of this place. He was _allowed_ to walk out. If I hadn’t been there, he would be dead. It’s not good enough, doctor. It’s just not good enough.’

The doctor sighs. ‘Mr Solo, you can take your complaints to Mr Waverly, of course. We will hold up our hands and admit fault. But for tonight, that’s it. I am going to go speak to the relevant staff to make sure there’s someone checking on him, and you have said you’ll watch him. For tonight, that’s all we can do. The sedative should keep him asleep through the night anyway. I’ll send someone in to see to his arms now. In the morning, we’ll start to unravel these feelings with him. Good night, Mr Solo.’

That’s as conclusive a dismissal as Napoleon has ever heard. He murmurs goodnight in return, but his attention is on Illya. He goes back to him, takes his hand again, and just sits there, watching him.

This is all so strange. Not long ago he was in India, in oppressive heat, fighting evil. Now here he is back home where everything should be normal, but it’s not. It’s so far past normal. He’s used enough to sitting vigil over Illya just as Illya sits vigil over him, but not for reasons like this. It’s too much for his mind to deal with. It’s just too hard.

He isn’t sleepy, but he is tired. He rests his forehead down on the two hands, his and Illya’s clasped together. He feels the warmth in Illya’s skin. But he sees him lying on the pavement, lying in pooled blood, his body smashed like a broken china doll. It had been so close. Just a moment’s delay in the traffic getting back here, and that’s what he would have arrived to.

He straightens up again and strokes his fingers over Illya’s hand.

‘I’ll get you through this,’ he promises, but he doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know what he can do. Nothing in his life has equipped him for this.

 

((O))

 

He had hoped, perhaps, that Illya would wake in the morning full of regret for what he did the night before. Isn’t that how sleep is supposed to work? Isn’t sleep supposed to heal all ills? But Illya wakes dull and miserable, and all he can speak of is how he wants to leave this world.

‘I will sit here every minute of the day and night if I have to,’ Napoleon tells him that morning, but he knows he can’t do that. He can’t possibly do that. He spent the night slipping in and out of sleep while Illya lay like a figure on a tomb, white against the bedsheets, his forearms bandaged, hardly even moving with dreams. Now Napoleon feels exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept at all. He hasn’t stopped for days. His first proper rest was on the flight home from India, but it’s never really proper rest, sleeping on an aeroplane. He wants to totter off to another room and have a real sleep, a sleep as deep as the one Illya seemed to have last night.

He looks at Illya, lying awake but silent on his bed, and he feels like crying. He doesn’t know if it’s exhaustion or worry, or both combined. He feels as if he’s in shock, as if that moment of Illya almost tilting himself over the edge of the building has left him shaking and torn apart. If only he could have a stiff drink, that might help, but he doesn’t think they’d allow that in here.

‘Do you want me to tell you about Hyderabad?’ he asks Illya.

Illya flicks his gaze to Napoleon, but there’s no real contact in his eyes.

‘Hyderabad,’ he repeats stupidly, as if he doesn’t know how to hold a conversation.

‘Yeah. I just got back from Hyderabad last night, remember? I had to take out a Thrush outpost there. It was – ’

Illya’s eyes have drifted away. He’s looking at the opposite wall, or through the opposite wall.

‘It was tough,’ Napoleon continues, because he doesn’t know what else to say. ‘Very hot. I wish you’d been there. I got knocked over the head and I spent the night tied up at a tannery. Vile smell. If you’d been there I would at least have had someone to talk to.’

He glances at Illya, but he’s not getting any response. It’s not important enough, he supposes. Right now Illya’s pain is the only thing that is real to him. That, and his memories. The thought of the memories that must haunt him make Napoleon feel sick. He thinks about what it must have been like for him on that first night after being taken down to that room; lying there naked, in the pitch dark, after that first day of repeated rape and violence. He must have been cold and in pain and miserable and terrified.

He blinks, looking back at Illya. He hasn’t really put on any weight since Napoleon brought him home. He hasn’t been eating. The bruises and burns are healing but it’s not a stretch to remember him as he was on that bed, filthy and thin and so very damaged.

‘I want to help you, Illya,’ he says. ‘How can I help you? How can I make it better?’

Illya just looks at him, as if he has just woken from sleep and can’t remember how to speak.

‘I don’t know,’ he says after a while, his voice thick and slurred. ‘I – don’t – ’

Napoleon puts a hand over his. His fingers are so thin, and his hand is cold, but he curls his fingers around Napoleon’s and hangs on.

‘I can be here,’ Napoleon says. ‘I can just be here.’

He needs to go to the office. He needs to file his reports, to type it all up, to fill in forms. He needs to report back to Waverly. He can’t quite cogitate any of that right now. It’s as if Hyderabad had been a dream, and only this room is real. Illya about to topple from the building is real. He sees that in his mind, over and over, caught in a loop. Illya about to fall. Grabbing him and pulling him back. Illya about to fall. Sometimes his mind stops him from grabbing him, and he watches him fall, down, down, down, until the pavement meets him.

‘You have work,’ Illya says, as if he’s been reading Napoleon’s worries.

Napoleon rubs his fingers over Illya’s, and sees the white bandages on his arms, and everything feels like a whirl. He remembers that conversation when he was in India, Illya so far away on the other end of the communicator, crying, sobbing because he had washed himself in bleach. He had been so helpless then, and he’s no less helpless now. All through this, he has been helpless. He’s saved Illya physically over and over, but he can’t seem to save his mind.

‘I can bring some of my work down here,’ he says.

Illya blinks. ‘You don’t have to watch me,’ he says. ‘The nurses will do that just as well.’

He feels a little spike of hurt, but he knows Illya doesn’t mean it like that. His friend is too caught up in his own pain to think of how his words will affect others.

‘I don’t have to, no,’ Napoleon says gently. ‘But I want to be with you.’

‘Oh,’ Illya says.

The silence falls again. Napoleon just sits there, feeling the warmth of the room around him, listening to the quiet. There isn’t even a clock in here to tick out its sound. He wonders if Illya would like a radio, but then wonders if he would be safe with a radio. Illya is too inventive, and if he really wanted to die he would be able to use a radio, the flex for hanging himself, or the batteries in a wireless for poison. Maybe a radio isn’t a good idea. He doesn’t think anything like that would reach him at the moment, anyway. He’s too far away.

He slips into an exhausted sleep, and dreams. He’s there in that club, creeping into that basement room. The smell is strong around him; stale urine, mould, damp. He can hear the music up above. The dream is confused. Sometimes it’s him on the bed, chained by his wrists and ankles. He’s afraid and he’s dirty and cold, and he thinks he’s going to die down here. He’s ashamed and he wants to run away, but he can’t get out of the chains. Then he’s standing, looking down at Illya, reaching out a hand to his flank. Illya’s skin feels like stone, but Napoleon looks and sees he’s lying there with an erection, his legs forcibly spread, and he’s crying, _please, please…_ Napoleon doesn’t know what to think. He’s on the bed and he’s looking at Illya on the bed, and somewhere in another part of the room there are two men, one of them tied down and the other fucking him relentlessly as his victim cries out. He looks back to Illya, and their eyes meet, and –

He comes awake, staring around. He’s still sitting in the chair in Illya’s room, and Illya is fast asleep too. Napoleon feels sick. He doesn’t know what to think. He feels dirtied by that dream, as if he’s the victim and the voyeur and the aggressor all at once. He shuffles uncomfortably on his chair, and for a moment he feels so strongly what Illya must have felt on that first night, when he was violated and alone and in pain.

He looks at his watch. It’s midday, and his stomach is rumbling, and he still feels like he needs a strong drink. A strong drink wouldn’t be a good idea. He hasn’t eaten since he was on the flight.

He stands very quietly and tiptoes out of the room. At the desk he speaks to a nurse, making sure someone will go down to sit with Illya. He doesn’t leave the Infirmary until he has seen the woman to Illya’s room. Then he goes and grabs a sandwich and coffee from the commissary, and eats in the corridors, on his way up to Waverly’s office.

‘Ah, Mr Solo,’ Waverly says when he walks into the office.

His sandwich is gone, but he’s still holding his coffee. The warmth feels good against his hands. He’s not sure what to say to Waverly.

‘You’ve come from the Infirmary?’ the old man asks, looking up at him. ‘How is Mr Kuryakin?’

Napoleon seats himself heavily and puts his coffee on the table. Waverly stands, goes over to the little drinks alcove, and comes back with a bottle.

‘I don’t do this often, mind,’ he says. ‘Not when a man’s on duty. But you look like you could use it.’

He unscrews the lid on the scotch and tilts it towards Napoleon’s cup, a look of enquiry on his face.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Napoleon nods, and pushes his cup forward a little. Waverly pours a generous amount into his drink. He sips it, and it’s good. There’s a comforting feeling to the warm coffee laced with cream and alcohol.

‘Mr Kuryakin,’ Waverly says again. ‘How is he?’

Napoleon shakes his head. ‘I don’t know that I’m really qualified to answer that question.’ He takes another sip, and snorts a desperate little laugh, and says, ‘Suicidal. He’s suicidal.’

‘Yes,’ Waverly says, as if he doesn’t know what to say either. This isn’t the kind of thing men talk about. ‘Yes. It’s difficult, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Napoleon agrees.

Waverly seems so uncertain, so far out of his comfort zone.

‘Do you think, Mr Solo, that he’d benefit from a visit? From me, I mean?’

Napoleon looks down into his drink, but the coffee is impenetrable. The room’s lights reflect from the surface. He thinks of how hard it feels to reach into Illya’s mind.

‘No,’ he says honestly. ‘No, sir, I don’t. I’m not sure if he even benefits from me at the moment.’

‘Oh, he does. You saved his life, Mr Solo,’ Waverly reminds him softly.

‘Yes, and he told me I should have let him fall,’ Napoleon says in a flat tone.

‘Depression is an evil affliction,’ Waverly says quietly. ‘An evil affliction. Mr Churchill called it his black dog, I think. That wasn’t Mr Kuryakin speaking, Napoleon. That was his depression.’

Napoleon looks up, startled. How often does Waverly use his first name? He wonders if Waverly has ever suffered from depression. Perhaps he has.

‘I’ve lived a long time on this earth,’ Waverly says. He has a glass, and he pours himself a little measure of the scotch. ‘I’ve seen a lot of things, Mr Solo. I’ve seen what man can do to man. You’ve seen a fair amount of that yourself, I know. I think, sometimes, you think I’m too old to understand the kind of thing that was done to Mr Kuryakin. I’m too much of a gentleman. Believe me, I understand the depravities of the world. I understand what happened to him. He will be given all the time and all the help that he needs.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Napoleon says. He takes a deep mouthful of coffee, then says again, ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Do you feel ready for debriefing after the Hyderabad affair?’ Waverly asks him.

He feels muddled and dazed after the last week. Everything has become a weird blur. Somehow Illya and Hyderabad are mixed in together, what happened there blending with the calls to Illya on the communicator, visualising him falling apart at home, coming back to finding him there on the roof. It’s all such a mess in his head. But perhaps debriefing will help him sort all of that out. Perhaps things will start to make sense. When he’s got Hyderabad out of his head, maybe he’ll be able to focus himself on Illya for a while.

‘Yes, I think so, sir,’ he says. ‘Better get it done while it’s fresh.’

Waverly reaches for a file and opens it in front of him on the table.

‘Good,’ he says. ‘Let’s get down to work, then.’

 

((O))

 

When he dreams, he dreams of Illya chained on that bed and subjected to horrific sexual attacks. He dreams of him lying in a bath of bleach, his skin blistering and flaking away. He dreams of him plummeting like a diver from the edge of the roof, and hitting concrete instead of water. He dreams of blood spreading so far it covers everything, and Illya’s broken face and body, and men touching him, forcing him to do terrible things. He wakes up screaming.

He dreams that he walks into the room where Illya is chained, but Lee is not there. No one is there but Illya. The lightbulb sways on its bare flex, so bright that every contour in the bricks stands out. He dreams that he bends over the bed, and Illya watches him and pleads and cries, but he ignores his cries. He climbs onto the mattress and feels the greasy, dirty fabric under his knees. His trousers are around his ankles, and he reaches out a hand and touches Illya’s cock, and Illya cries and begs for him to stop. He dreams he unhooks his legs from the end of the bed and raises his ankles to the beams above, and positions himself, stroking his own erect cock, getting himself ready to take his prize. And then he wakes, crying out, sweating, his cock rock hard under the sheets, staring into the darkness and the traces of light from outside.

‘I don’t understand why,’ he tells the U.N.C.L.E. psychiatrist. ‘I don’t feel that way about Illya. I’ve never felt that way about anyone. I’ve never wanted to force myself on anyone.’

The psychiatrist sits there in the gentle light, nodding his head, his forehead a little furrowed.

‘But you see yourself forcing yourself on your partner. You imagine yourself in the place of one of his abusers.’

‘Yes,’ Napoleon says. There’s a light film of sweat across his forehead. The room feels very close. ‘I don’t feel that way about Illya,’ he insists. ‘Especially not now. The idea revolts me.’

‘The idea of male love? The idea of sexual assault? Or the idea of looking at your partner like that?’

‘I don’t know. All of it,’ he mutters uncomfortably.

He wants to take his jacket off, but he doesn’t want to feel exposed. Illya was exposed worse than that, of course. Illya was stripped bare and left like that for weeks, being exposed to the core of his being. The thought of it nauseates him, and the shadows of his dreams make him come close to vomit.

‘Sexual assault,’ he says, seeing Illya in his mind, naked and helpless. ‘Looking at him like that. Not male love in itself. No. If all parties are happy to be there, I couldn’t care less about who’s loving who. But – Illya, like that...’

‘Are you enjoying it in your dream?’

‘ _No_ ,’ he insists. He isn’t even sure, but he spits out that _no_ because he can’t bear the thought of enjoying it. He doesn’t think there’s either enjoyment or revulsion in his dream. It’s just what happens. It’s when he wakes that the revulsion comes in.

‘You’re a man with a high libido, Napoleon,’ the psychiatrist says, steepling his fingers in front of his face. ‘Don’t you ever get the desire to – ’

‘Not to rape someone!’ he spits, horrified. ‘To rape anyone – Illya – No! Of course it doesn’t!’

He feels sick, his mind spinning. But he pushes himself, thinking. That’s what he’s here for; to examine his thoughts. So he does. A lovely girl in his apartment, a little wine. Someone very beautiful, that he really wants. Then she says no, when he’s already riled up, led on. Is there a hint of pleasure in that idea? Forcing her? He goes through that in his mind, holding her down, pushing her knee aside with his own, using his masculine strength…

No. His mind revolts from the idea. When he replaces the girl with Illya, Illya as he was then, chained by wrists and ankles, emaciated and bruised, his mind freezes. He feels dirty just to think of it.

‘No,’ he says, reasoned, definite. ‘No, I don’t ever get the desire to. And not Illya. God, not Illya.’

The psychiatrist smiles, looking satisfied. ‘Then your dreams stem from something else. Horror. You found your partner in that room, didn’t you? You’re the one who discovered him and rescued him.’

‘Yes,’ Napoleon murmurs. ‘Yes. I searched for weeks. I thought he was dead, but I couldn’t give up on him. Then I found him…’

Illya had looked like a creature from underground, pale and so helpless, as if he hadn’t seen sunlight for a long, long time. He had looked so soft and helpless.

‘Your mind is trying to process that,’ the psychiatrist says. ‘It’s a big thing, Napoleon. You saw your friend in a position you would never wish to see him in. It’s not just victims who suffer. People who witness crime have trouble coming to terms with it.’

‘I see terrible things all the time in my job.’

‘Not like this.’ The psychiatrist shakes his head. ‘Not like this. Not your partner, the man you’ve worked with now for a number of years, through life and death situations. Mr Kuryakin has always been a strong man, hasn’t he? A self contained man, very much in control of himself.’

‘Yes,’ Napoleon says, with a little smile. ‘Yes, that’s Illya. Self contained. He – was self contained...’

‘And now he’s not. Now he’s very much dependent on others. He was dependent on you to rescue him. He’s dependent on a lot of people in this department at the moment. When he was in captivity, he was utterly dependent on his captors. You have a lot to cope with, Napoleon. Your view of your partner has been radically shifted. You’ve seen a confident, capable man be reduced to attempted suicide. You’ve seen him in a situation you would never wish to see him in, sexually exposed, and weak. Are you surprised that your mind is processing that in dreams? Are you surprised that the dreams aren’t comfortable for you?’

‘No,’ Napoleon says, rubbing his thumb over his lip. ‘No, I suppose I’m not. But – ’ He takes in a deep breath. ‘I don’t want to see him like that. I don’t want anyone to have seen him like that, but I feel like I’m betraying him, when I dream about it.’

‘You cannot control your dreams,’ the psychiatrist insists. ‘You can only control your reaction to them in your waking hours. In time, the dreams will go away.’

‘I hope they do,’ he says. ‘I hope to God they do.’

 

((O))

 

Napoleon brings hot chocolate for Illya, because he wants to see him smile. He checks his gun in at the desk before going down to Illya’s room, exchanging one of those smiles with the nurse there that he’s so tired of. He’s so tired of meeting the nurses’ eyes and exchanging quiet sympathy, as if Illya is dead rather than ill. He’s tired of having to check his gun in to be sure Illya can’t grab it, and thinking through everything he brings to the room just in case it might give his friend an opportunity to die. The hot chocolate is in an insulated plastic mug, in part to keep the drink warm as he carries it down, and in part, just in case. Just in case Illya smashes a ceramic mug and uses the shards. There’s always _just in case_ running through Napoleon’s mind, and he’s tired of it.

‘He’s doing better today,’ the nurse tells him, but he still checks in his gun, and she comes down with him to unlock Illya’s door.

‘I thought of asking him if he wanted to take a stroll,’ Napoleon says. ‘Just up and down the corridor, or something. Not outside here.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ she smiles. ‘As long as you’re with him. He can leave his room as long as he’s accompanied.’

She looks through the keys in her hand, and picks one. It gives Napoleon an uncomfortable feeling to see Illya locked in like this. He was a prisoner for so long, and now he’s a prisoner again, imprisoned by people trying to help him.

He goes into the room with the deep, steaming mug in his hand. The nurse leaves the door unlocked because Napoleon is in there with him now. Illya is sitting on his bed with a book on his lap, but he’s not reading. He’s dressed in day clothes, a polo shirt and slacks, but his feet are bare and he’s just sitting on the bed, his eyes on the opposite wall. The scars of healing sores are visible on his wrists and ankles, a constant reminder of the chains.

When Napoleon comes in he manufactures something of a smile, and Napoleon smiles back. He wishes Illya’s smile could reach his eyes.

‘Hot chocolate,’ Napoleon says, proffering the mug to him. ‘I thought you might like it.’

‘Oh,’ Illya says.

There’s actually a little light in his tone. It’s been eight days, and they’ve felt like such very long days. Every time Napoleon has visited it’s felt as if he’s swallowed lead. It’s been so hard to see Illya like that, and seeing Illya in that dark and desperate void has made him feel low and helpless too.

‘Got it?’ Napoleon asks, as Illya curls his fingers around the handle. ‘I would have gotten whipped cream, but I was afraid it would all be dissolved by the time I got down here with it.’

‘Thank you,’ Illya says, and he takes a sip, and then rests back against the headboard of the bed. ‘Thank you,’ he says again. ‘It’s good.’

Napoleon smiles. ‘I’m glad,’ he says.

Illya just sits there, drinking. Then he looks up and says, ‘Where’s yours?’

‘Oh, I didn’t get any,’ Napoleon shrugs. ‘I’ve been drinking coffee all morning. I thought I’d give my bladder a rest.’

He hadn’t even thought of getting himself a drink. He’d just thought of trying to make Illya smile.

‘I went to that little store in Soho and got a tin of the proper stuff,’ Napoleon tells him. ‘I had Freddie make it up for you in the Commissary, but it’s not powder. It’s the real deal.’

‘It’s good,’ Illya says again. ‘Thank you, Napoleon.’

There’s a little chocolate on his top lip. Napoleon pulls out his handkerchief and wipes the smear away.

‘You look tired,’ he says.

Illya looks exhausted, with dark shadows beneath his eyes.

‘I didn’t sleep well.’ He gives a twisted little smile. ‘Big news, huh? I’m tired all the time.’

‘You want a little sleep?’

He shakes his head, stroking his finger along the rim of the mug. ‘I’m not supposed to sleep in the day. Wake at eight. Stay awake until nine in the evening. Sleeping pills. Then sleep, hypothetically. Except I don’t sleep well. Then I have to wake at eight, and I stay awake until nine in the evening, and I take my sleeping pills, and the merry-go-round revolves again.’

‘The sleeping pills don’t help?’

Illya shrugs. ‘They make me very drowsy. I fall asleep at half past nine. Nightmares by midnight. I can take another dose at one. They come in to check me then anyway, so there’s no point being asleep. I take the pills and fall asleep at half past one. Nightmares. I wake up. Sleeping pills at five. I fall asleep at half past five. Nightmares.’

‘Sounds fun,’ Napoleon murmurs. Illya’s voice is so hollow.

‘What’s really fun is when the sleeping pills won’t let go, so I’m in the nightmare, but I can’t wake up…’

‘God,’ Napoleon says.

Illya’s mug is empty, and Napoleon takes it and puts it on the side table. He wants to ask about the nightmares, but he doesn’t want to ask. He thinks he can already imagine, and he doesn’t want to imagine.

‘I just want some sleep,’ Illya says desperately, and his voice breaks, and there are tears welling and rolling down his cheeks. ‘I want to be allowed to sleep in the day, because I can’t sleep at night, and the dreams are always there, and – ’

Napoleon gets off his chair, sits on the bed, and folds Illya into his arms. Illya sobs, shaking against him, his words becoming incoherent. Napoleon holds him and strokes his back and rocks him gently. He wants a way to fix this. He wants to make it all better at a stroke, and he has no idea how. Bizarrely, the tears feel like something of a breakthrough. He hasn’t seen Illya cry in all this long week. He’s been too far down for tears.

‘Okay,’ he says gently. ‘Okay, partner. It’s all right. I’ve got you.’

The storm is passing. Illya grows still against him, and for a while they just sit like that, Illya slumped against Napoleon’s chest. Napoleon strokes his hair and kisses the top of his head, then loosens his arms and offers Illya his handkerchief to wipe his face.

‘Come down to the bathroom with me,’ he says. ‘Come wash your face, get a drink of water.’

Illya gets up, shaking and passive. Napoleon gives him his slippers then puts an arm over his shoulders and escorts him out of the room, down the hall to the bathroom. He leans against the wall while Illya washes his face, then uses the urinal, then goes back to the basin to wash his hands.

‘Why don’t you come for a walk round the block?’ Napoleon asks. ‘Stretch your legs.’

Illya looks up, turning off the tap. ‘Round the block?’ He glances at the door as if there are unknown horrors outside.

‘Just around the Infirmary,’ Napoleon clarifies. ‘I didn’t mean outside. I didn’t even mean out of the Infirmary, unless you want to go out. Just somewhere other than the four walls of your room. I thought you might be craving a change.’

‘I – All right,’ he says. ‘Yes. All right.’ He looks down at his slippers. ‘Shoes,’ he says. ‘I need my shoes.’

‘Slippers are fine,’ Napoleon shrugs, but Illya shakes his head.

‘No. I need my shoes on. I want to be properly dressed.’

‘Okay,’ Napoleon says.

He goes with Illya back to his room, and waits while he exchanges slippers for leather slip-ons, and thinks uncomfortably that they’re probably slip-ons so he doesn’t have laces to hang himself with. That thought is awful. But he thinks something has changed in Illya. There’s something lighter in him, at last.

‘Don’t you feel a little ridiculous?’ Illya asks as they walk. ‘Parading around the corridors like this?’

Napoleon laughs, looking about at the corridor walls, the doors with windows in them, the occasional poster or sign.

‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I just thought you might like to get out of that room for a bit. Convalescence. You know.’ He looks sideways at his partner. ‘What do you think of coming down to the Commissary?’

Illya starts rubbing his fingers together at his hip, a quick jerking movement that makes a dry rustle. As they walk past another patient, an agent with his arm in a sling, his eyes slide away so he doesn’t look at the man. His whole body seems to shrink.

‘I – don’t know,’ he says, when the man is past. ‘Really, Napoleon.’

‘I’ll get you cake,’ Napoleon says enticingly. ‘They’ve got some really good chocolate cake today. Sticky, thick slices.’

He can see the unhappiness on Illya’s face. He puts a hand on his arm and stops him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t be pushing you, I know. We’ll stick to the Infirmary. I’ll get you a slice of that cake later, and bring it down to you. I’ll get Freddie to make you some more of that hot chocolate to go with it.’

The relief is as obvious as the unhappiness. Illya’s shoulders relax. Napoleon thinks of everything Illya has been through, and what he must feel about people seeing him. He knows he feels intensely self-conscious of his body; that, no matter how much he knows he wasn’t to blame, he feels different and dirty under people’s gaze. There is a terrible curiosity in Illya’s colleagues. They’ve all heard something about what happened to him. They’ve all heard something about what it’s done to him. Everyone wants to know how he is. All Illya wants is to hide.

He nudges his hand a little on Illya’s arm, encouraging him to walk on. This is a milestone, really, walking with him around the Infirmary corridors. The rest of Headquarters is a world away. They will have to take it in steps, expanding the circles bit by bit, until finally Illya’s orbit is as large as it ever was. Walking about the Infirmary is a stage further than Illya huddling in his room, and him huddling in his room is a step on from when he would barely even stir from the bed. Illya smiling every now and then is a step on from an absent look of misery, and that’s a step on from the terrible emptiness. There will be times, he knows, when all Illya wants is to die, but today he doesn’t feel like that. Today he’s able to go out through his door and walk in the corridors, and not break down.

‘I’ll get you that cake,’ Napoleon promises again. ‘I’ll bring two mugs and two slices of cake, and we can have high tea in your room. No need to go to the Commissary.’

‘Thank you,’ Illya says. He half-smiles. ‘I’m just – not ready yet. Not yet.’

There’s hope in that ‘not yet.’ Napoleon chooses to see hope.

 


End file.
